The Classic of Poetry, also Shijing or Shih-ching, translated variously as the Book of Songs, Book of Odes, or simply known as the Odes or Poetry (Chinese: 詩; pinyin: Shī) is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry, comprising 305 works dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BC. It is one of the "Five Classics" traditionally said to have been compiled by Confucius, and has been studied and memorized by scholars in China and neighboring countries over two millennia, since the Qing dynasty, its rhyme patterns have also been analysed in the study of Old Chinese phonology.

Early references refer to the anthology as the 300 Poems (shi). The Odes first became known as a jīng, or a "classic book", in the canonical sense, as part of the Han Dynasty official adoption of Confucianism as the guiding principles of Chinese society.[citation needed] The same word shi later became a generic term for poetry;[2] in English, lacking an exact equivalent for the Chinese, the translation of the word shi in this regard is generally as "poem", "song", or "ode". Before its elevation as a canonical classic, the Classic of Poetry (Shi jing) was known as the Three Hundred Songs or the Songs.[3]

The Classic of Poetry contains the oldest chronologically authenticated Chinese poems,[2] the majority of the Odes date to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BC). A final section of 5 "Eulogies of Shang" purports to be ritual songs of the Shang Dynasty as handed down by their descendents in the state of Song, but is generally considered quite late in date.[4][5] According to the Eastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan, the latest material in the Shijing was the song "Tree-stump Grove" (株林) in the "Odes of Chen", dated to the middle of the Spring and Autumn period (c. 700 BC).[6]

Ah! Solemn is the clear temple,

reverent and concordant the illustrious assistants.
Dignified, dignified are the many officers,
holding fast to the virtue of King Wen.
Responding in praise to the one in Heaven,
they hurry swiftly within the temple.
Greatly illustrious, greatly honored,

The content of the Poetry can be divided into two main sections: the "Airs of the States", and the eulogies and hymns,[10] the "Airs of the States" are shorter lyrics in simple language that are generally ancient folk songs which record the voice of the common people.[10] They often speak of love and courtship, longing for an absent lover, soldiers on campaign, farming and housework, and political satire and protest,[10] on the other hand, songs in the two "Hymns" sections and the "Eulogies" section tend to be longer ritual or sacrificial songs, usually in the forms of courtly panegyrics and dynastic hymns which praise the founders of the Zhou dynasty.[10] They also include hymns used in sacrificial rites and songs used by the aristocracy in their sacrificial ceremonies or at banquets.[11][12]

Whatever the origin of the various Shijing poems as folk songs or not, they "all seem to have passed through the hands of men of letters at the royal Zhou court";[13] in other words, they show an overall literary polish together with some general stylistic consistency. About 95% of lines in the Poetry are written in a four-syllable meter, with a slight caesura between the second and third syllables.[10] Lines tend to occur in syntactically related couplets, with occasional parallelism, and longer poems are generally divided into similarly structured stanzas.[14]

All but six of the "Eulogies" consist of a single stanza, and the "Court Hymns" exhibit wide variation in the number of stanzas and their lengths. Almost all of the "Airs", however, consist of three stanzas, with four-line stanzas being most common,[15][16] although a few rhyming couplets occur, the standard pattern in such four-line stanzas required a rhyme between the second and fourth lines. Often the first or third lines would rhyme with these, or with each other,[17] this style later became known as the "shi" style for much of Chinese history.

One of the characteristics of the poems in the Classic of Poetry is that they tend to possess "elements of repetition and variation",[14] this results in an "alteration of similarities and differences in the formal structure: in successive stanzas, some lines and phrases are repeated verbatim, while others vary from stanza to stanza".[18] Characteristically, the parallel or syntactically matched lines within a specific poem share the same, identical words (or characters) to a large degree, as opposed to confining the parallelism between lines to using grammatical category matching of the words in one line with the other word in the same position in the corresponding line; but, not by using the same, identical word(s).[14] Disallowing verbal repetition within a poem would by the time of Tang poetry be one of the rules to distinguish the old style poetry from the new, regulated style.

The works in the Classic of Poetry vary in their lyrical qualities, which relates to the musical accompaniment with which they were in their early days performed, the songs from the "Hymns" and "Eulogies", which are the oldest material in the Poetry, were performed to slow, heavy accompaniment from bells, drums, and stone chimes.[10] However, these and the later actual musical scores or choreography which accompanied the Shijing poems have been lost.

Nearly all of the songs in the Poetry are rhyming, with end rhyme, as well as frequent internal rhyming.[14] While some of these verses still rhyme in modern varieties of Chinese, others had ceased to rhyme by the Middle Chinese period, for example, the eighth song (芣苢 Fú Yǐ)[a] has a tightly constrained structure implying rhymes between the penultimate words (here shown in bold) of each pair of lines:[19]

The second and third stanzas still rhyme in Standard Chinese, with the rhyme words even having the same tone, but the first stanza does not rhyme in Middle Chinese or any modern variety, this was attributed to lax rhyming practice until the late-Ming dynasty scholar Chen Di argued that the original rhymes had been obscured by sound change. Since Chen, scholars have analyzed the rhyming patterns of the Poetry as crucial evidence for the reconstruction of Old Chinese phonology.[20]

Traditional scholarship of the Poetry identified three major literary devices employed in the songs: straightforward narrative (fù 賦), explicit comparisons (bǐ 比) and implied comparisons (xìng 興). The poems of the Classic of Poetry tend to have certain typical patterns in both rhyme and rhythm, to make much use of imagery, often derived from nature.

Although the Shijing does not specify the names of authors in association with the contained works, both traditional commentaries and modern scholarship have put forth hypotheses on authorship, the "Golden Coffer" chapter of the Book of Documents says that the poem "Owl" (Chinese: 鴟鴞) in the "Odes of Bin" was written by the Duke of Zhou. Many of the songs appear to be folk songs and other compositions used in the court ceremonies of the aristocracy.[11] Furthermore, many of the songs, based on internal evidence, appear to be written either by women, or from the perspective of a female persona, the repeated emphasis on female authorship of poetry in the Shijing was made much of in the process of attempting to give the poems of the women poets of the Ming-Qing period canonical status.[21] Despite the impersonality of the poetic voice characteristic of the Songs,[22] many of the poems are written from the perspective of various generic personalities.

According to tradition, the method of collection of the various Shijing poems involved the appointment of officials, whose duties included documenting verses current from the various states which constituting the empire. Out of these many collected pieces, also according to tradition, Confucius made a final editorial round of decisions for elimination or inclusion in the received version of the Poetry, as with all great literary works of ancient China, the Poetry has been annotated and commented on numerous times throughout history, as well as in this case providing a model to inspire future poetic works.

Various traditions concern the gathering of the compiled songs and the editorial selection from these make up the classic text of the Odes: "Royal Officials' Collecting Songs" (Chinese: 王官采詩) is recorded in the Book of Han,[b] and "Master Confucius Deletes Songs" (Chinese: 孔子刪詩) refers to Confucius and his mention in the Records of the Grand Historian, where it says from originally some 3,000 songs and poems in a previously extant "Odes" that Confucius personally selected the "300" which he felt best conformed to traditional ritual propriety, thus producing the Classic of Poetry.

The Confucian school eventually came to consider the verses of the "Airs of the States" to have been collected in the course of activities of officers dispatched by the Zhou Dynasty court, whose duties included the field collection of the songs local to the territorial states of Zhou,[2] this territory was roughly the Yellow River Plain, Shandong, southwestern Hebei, eastern Gansu, and the Han River region. Perhaps during the harvest, after the officials returned from their missions, the king was said to have observed them himself in an effort to understand the current condition of the common people.[2] The well-being of the people was of special concern to the Zhou because of their ideological position that the right to rule was based on the benignity of the rulers to the people in accordance with the will of Heaven, and that this Heavenly Mandate would be withdrawn upon the failure of the ruling dynasty to ensure the prosperity of their subjects.[23] The people's folksongs were deemed to be the best gauge of their feelings and conditions, and thus indicative of whether the nobility was ruling according to the mandate of Heaven or not, accordingly the songs were collected from the various regions, converted from their diverse regional dialects into standard literary language, and presented accompanied with music at the royal courts.[24]

The Classic of Poetry historically has a major place in the Four Books and Five Classics, the canonical works associated with Confucianism,[25] some pre-Qin dynasty texts, such as the Analects and a recently excavated manuscript from 300 BC entitled "Confucius' Discussion of the Odes", mention Confucius' involvement with the Classic of Poetry but Han dynasty historian Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian was the first work to directly attribute the work to Confucius.[26] Subsequent Confucian tradition held that the Shijing collection was edited by Confucius from a larger 3,000-piece collection to its traditional 305-piece form,[27] this claim is believed to reflect an early Chinese tendency to relate all of the Five Classics in some way or another to Confucius, who by the 1st century BC had become the model of sages and was believed to have maintained a cultural connection to the early Zhou dynasty.[26] This view is now generally discredited, as the Zuo zhuan records that the Classic of Poetry already existed in a definitive form when Confucius was just a young child.[11]

In works attributed to him, Confucius comments upon the Classic of Poetry in such a way as to indicate that he holds it in great esteem. A story in the Analects recounts that Confucius' son Kong Li told the story: "The Master once stood by himself, and I hurried to seek teaching from him, he asked me, 'You've studied the Odes?' I answered, 'Not yet.' He replied, 'If you study the Odes not, then I have nothing to speak.'"[28]

According to Han tradition, the Poetry and other classics were targets of the burning of books in 213 BC under Qin Shi Huang, and the songs had to be reconstructed largely from memory in the subsequent Han period. However the discovery of pre-Qin copies showing the same variation as Han texts, as well as evidence of Qin patronage of the Poetry, have led modern scholars to doubt this account.[29]

During the Han period there were three different versions of the Poetry which each belonged to different hermeneutic traditions,[30] the Lu Poetry (魯詩 Lǔ shī), the Qi Poetry (齊詩 Qí shī) and the Han Poetry (韓詩 Hán shī) were officially recognized with chairs at the Imperial Academy during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han (156–87 BC).[30] Until the later years of the Eastern Han period, the dominant version of the Poetry was the Lu Poetry, named after the state of Lu, and founded by Shen Pei, a student of a disciple of the Warring States period philosopher Xunzi.[30]

The Mao Tradition of the Poetry (毛詩傳 Máo shī zhuàn), attributed to an obscure scholar named Máo Hēng (毛亨) who lived during the 2nd or 3rd centuries BC,[30] was not officially recognized until the reign of Emperor Ping (1 BC to 6 AD).[31] However, during the Eastern Han period, the Mao Poetry gradually became the primary version.[30] Proponents of the Mao Poetry said that its text was descended from the first generation of Confucius' students, and as such should be the authoritative version.[30]Xu Shen's influential dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, written in the 2nd century AD, quotes almost exclusively from the Mao Poetry.[30] Finally, the renowned Eastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan used the Mao Poetry as the basis for his annotated edition of the Poetry.[30] By the 5th century, the Lu, Qi and Han traditions had died out, leaving only the Mao Poetry, which has become the received text in use today.[29] Only isolated fragments of the Lu text survive, among the remains of the Xiping Stone Classics.[31] Zheng Xuan's edition of the Mao text became the imperially authorized text and commentary on the Poetry in 653 AD.[30]

Part of the Kǒngzǐ Shīlùn (孔子詩論), an early discussion of the Classic of Poetry

The Book of Odes has been a revered Confucian classic since the Han Dynasty, and has been studied and memorized by centuries of scholars in China,[12] the individual songs of the Odes, though frequently on simple, rustic subjects, have traditionally been saddled with extensive, elaborate allegorical meanings that assigned moral or political meaning to the smallest details of each line.[32] The popular songs were seen as good keys to understanding the troubles of the common people, and were often read as allegories; complaints against lovers were seen as complaints against faithless rulers,[12] "if a maiden warns her lover not to be too rash... commentators promptly discover that the piece refers to a feudal noble whose brother had been plotting against him...".[32]

The extensive allegorical traditions associated with the Odes were theorized by Herbert Giles to have begun in the Warring States period as a justification for Confucius' focus upon such a seemingly simple and ordinary collection of verses.[33] These elaborate, far-fetched interpretations seem to have gone completely unquestioned until the 12th century, when scholar Zheng Qiao (鄭樵, 1104–1162) first wrote his skepticism of them.[34] European sinologists like Giles and Marcel Granet ignored these traditional interpretations in their analysis of the original meanings of the Odes. Granet, in his list of rules for properly reading the Odes, wrote that readers should "take no account of the standard interpretation", "reject in no uncertain terms the distinction drawn between songs evicting a good state of morals and songs attesting to perverted morality", and "[discard] all symbolic interpretations, and likewise any interpretation that supposes a refined technique on the part of the poets".[35] These traditional allegories of politics and morality are no longer seriously followed by any modern readers in China or elsewhere.[34]

The Odes became an important and controversial force, influencing political, social and educational phenomena.[36] During the struggle between Confucian, Legalist, and other schools of thought, the Confucians used the Shijing to bolster their viewpoint,[36] on the Confucian side, the Shijing became a foundational text which informed and validated literature, education, and political affairs.[37] The Legalists, on their side, attempted to suppress the Shijing by violence, after the Legalist philosophy was endorsed by the Qin Dynasty, prior to their final triumph over the neighboring states: the suppression of Confucian and other thought and literature after the Qin victories and the start of Burning of Books and Burying of Scholars era, starting in 213 BC, extended to attempt to prohibit the Shijing.[36]

As the idea of allegorical expression grew, when kingdoms or feudal leaders wished to express or validate their own positions, they would sometimes couch the message within a poem, or by allusion, this practice became common among educated Chinese in their personal correspondences and spread to Japan and Korea as well.

Modern scholarship on the Classic of Poetry often focuses on doing linguistic reconstruction and research in Old Chinese by analyzing the rhyme schemes in the Odes, which show vast differences when read in modern Mandarin Chinese.[19] Although preserving more Old Chinese syllable endings than Mandarin, Modern Cantonese and Min Nan are also quite different from the Old Chinese language represented in the Odes.[38]

C.H. Wang refers to the account of King Wu's victory over the Shang dynasty in the "Major Court Hymns" as the "Weniad" (a name that parallels The Iliad), seeing it as part of a greater narrative discourse in China that extols the virtues of wén (文 "literature, culture") over more military interests.[39]

Qianlong Emperor
–
The Qianlong Emperor was the sixth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. This turned around in his years, the Qing empire began to decline with rampant corruption and wastefulness in his court. Hongli was adored both by his grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor and his father, the Yongzheng Emperor

Zhou dynasty
–
The Zhou dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. This period of Chinese history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese bronze-ware making, the dynasty also spans the period in which the written script evolved into its almost-modern form with the use of an archaic clerical script that em

2.
Population concentration and boundaries of the Western Zhou dynasty (1050–771 BC) in China

3.
States of the Western Zhou dynasty

4.
A Western Zhou bronze gui vessel, c. 1000 BC

Old Chinese
–
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou p

Seal script
–
Seal script is an ancient style of writing Chinese characters that was common throughout the latter half of the 1st millennium BC. It evolved organically out of the Zhou dynasty script, arising in the Warring State of Qin, there are two uses of the word seal script, the Large or Great Seal script and the lesser or Small Seal Script, the latter is a

Traditional Chinese characters
–
Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both s

3.
A Series of Reading workbook in Traditional Chinese used in some Elementary schools in the Philippines.

Simplified Chinese characters
–
Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has

3.
The first batch of Simplified Characters introduced in 1935 consisted of 324 characters.

Standard Chinese
–
Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic lang

1.
A poster outside of high school in Yangzhou urges people to speak Putonghua

2.
Zhongguo Guanhua (中国官话/中國官話), or Medii Regni Communis Loquela ("Middle Kingdom's Common Speech"), used on the frontispiece of an early Chinese grammar published by Étienne Fourmont (with Arcadio Huang) in 1742

Hanyu Pinyin
–
Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languag

1.
A school slogan asking elementary students to speak Putonghua is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.

2.
In Yiling, Yichang, Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin

Wu Chinese
–
Wu is a group of linguistically similar and historically related varieties of Chinese primarily spoken in the whole city of Shanghai, Zhejiang province, southern Jiangsu province and bordering areas. Major Wu varieties include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Ningbo, Wuxi, Wenzhou/Oujiang, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, Wu speakers, such as Chiang Kai-shek,

Cantonese
–
Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as

1.
Street in Chinatown, San Francisco. Cantonese has traditionally been the dominant Chinese variant among Chinese populations in the Western world.

3.
Chinese dictionary from Tang dynasty. Modern Cantonese pronunciation is more similar to Middle Chinese from this era than other Chinese varieties.

Jyutping
–
Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanisation Scheme, the LSHK promotes the use of this romanisation system. The name Jyutping is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of th

1.
Jyutping Romanization.

Southern Min
–
Southern Min, or Minnan, is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in certain parts of China including southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Zhejiang, and in Taiwan. The Min Nan dialects are spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia. In common parlance, Southern Min

1.
Koa-a books, Min Nan written in Chinese characters

2.
Distribution of Southern Min.

Hokkien
–
Hokkien /hɒˈkiɛn/ is a group of Southern Min dialects spoken throughout Southeastern China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and by other overseas Chinese. Hokkien originated in southern Fujian, the Min-speaking province and it is closely related to Teochew, though there is limited mutual intelligibility, and is somewhat more distantly related to Hainanese a

1.
Distribution of Min Nan dialects. Hokkien is dark green.

Middle Chinese
–
The fanqie method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid 12th-century Yunjing and other rime tables incorporate a more sophisticated, the rime tables attest to a number of sound changes that had occurred over the centuries following the publication of the Q

Reconstructions of Old Chinese
–
Several authors have produced reconstructions of Old Chinese phonology, beginning with the Swedish sinologist Bernard Karlgren in the 1940s and continuing to the present day. Although the various notations appear to be different, they correspond with each other on most points. By the 1970s, it was agreed that Old Chinese had fewer points of articul

1.
The start of the first rhyme class (東 dōng "east") of the Guangyun rhyme dictionary

Pinyin
–
Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languag

1.
A school slogan asking elementary students to speak Putonghua is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.

2.
In Yiling, Yichang, Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin

Chinese poetry
–
Chinese poetry is poetry written, spoken, or chanted in the Chinese language. Poetry has consistently been held in high regard in China. Westerners also have found in it an interesting and pleasurable field of study, Classical Chinese poetry includes, perhaps first and foremost shi, and also other major types such as ci and qu. There is also a trad

Confucius
–
Confucius was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. The philosophy of Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and his followers competed successfully with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era onl

Qing dynasty
–
It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The Qing multi-cultural empire lasted almost three centuries and formed the base for the modern Chinese state. The dynasty was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, in the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal, began organizing Banners, m

3.
An Italian map showing the "Kingdom of the Nüzhen " or the " Jin Tartars", who "have occupied and are at present ruling China", north of Liaodong and Korea, published in 1682

4.
Qing era brush container

Old Chinese phonology
–
Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence. The oldest surviving Chinese verse, in the Classic of Poetry, although many details are disputed, most recent reconstructions agree on the basic structure. It is generally agreed that Old Chinese differed from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palat

2.
Page from a copy of a Song dynasty edition of the Shuowen Jiezi, an early source on the structure of characters, showing characters with the 言 element

Shi (poetry)
–
Shi and shih are romanizations of the character 詩 or 诗, the Chinese word for all poetry generally and across all languages. This anthology included both aristocratic poems and more rustic works believed to have derived from Huaxia folk songs and they are composed in ancient Chinese, mostly in four-character lines. In such analysis, shi poetry is co

1.
Shi

Han Dynasty
–
The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. Spanning over four centuries, the Han period is considered an age in Chinese history. To this day, Chinas majority ethnic group refers to itself as the Han people and it was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known po

4.
A gilded bronze oil lamp in the shape of a kneeling female servant, dated 2nd century BC, found in the tomb of Dou Wan, wife of the Han prince Liu Sheng; its sliding shutter allows for adjustments in the direction and brightness in light while it also traps smoke within the body.

Confucianism
–
Confucianism, also known as Ruism, is described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or simply a way of life. In the Han dynasty, Confucian approaches edged out the proto-Taoist Huang-Lao, the disintegration of the Han political order in the second century CE opened the way for the doct

Zhou Dynasty
–
The Zhou dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. This period of Chinese history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese bronze-ware making, the dynasty also spans the period in which the written script evolved into its almost-modern form with the use of an archaic clerical script that em

2.
Population concentration and boundaries of the Western Zhou dynasty (1050–771 BC) in China

3.
States of the Western Zhou dynasty

4.
A Western Zhou bronze gui vessel, c. 1000 BC

Shang Dynasty
–
The Shang dynasty or Yin dynasty, according to traditional historiography, ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from such as the Book of Documents, Bamboo Annals. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project dated them from c.1600 t

2.
Remnants of advanced, stratified societies dating back to the Shang period have been found in the Yellow River Valley.

3.
The site of Yin, the capital (1350–1046 BC) of the Shang dynasty, also called Yin dynasty

4.
Oracle bones pit at Yin

State of Song
–
Sòng was a state during the Zhou dynasty of ancient China, with its capital at Shangqiu. The state was founded soon after King Wu of Zhou conquered the Shang dynasty to establish the Zhou dynasty in 1046/46 BC and it was conquered by the State of Qi in 286 BC, during the Warring States period. Confucius was a descendant of a Song nobleman who moved

1.
Chinese states in the 5th century BC

Spring and Autumn period
–
The Spring and Autumn period was a period in Chinese history from approximately 771 to 476 BC which corresponds roughly to the first half of the Eastern Zhou dynasty. The periods name derives from the Spring and Autumn Annals, a chronicle of the state of Lu between 722 and 479 BC, which associates with Confucius. The gradual Partition of Jin, one o

4.
A large bronze tripod vessel from the Spring and Autumn period, now located at the Henan Museum

King Wen of Zhou
–
King Wen of Zhou was king of Zhou during the late Shang dynasty in ancient China. Although it was his son Wu who conquered the Shang following the Battle of Muye, a large number of the hymns of the Classic of Poetry are praises to the legacy of King Wen. Some consider him the first epic hero of Chinese history, born Ji Chang, Wen was the son of Tai

1.
Ji Chang

Caesura
–
A caesura, also written cæsura and cesura, is a break in a verse where one phrase ends and the following phrase begins. In time value this break may vary between the slightest perception of all the way up to a full pause. A caesura in music represents a break or pause. The length of a caesura where notated is at the discretion of the conductor, in

1.
An example of a caesura in modern western music notation.

Syntax
–
In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, specifically word order. The term syntax is used to refer to the study of such principles and processes. The goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages, in mathematics, syntax r

1.
A syntactic parse of "Alfred spoke" under the dependency formalism

Tang poetry
–
The Quantangshi includes over 48,900 poems written by over 2,200 authors. During the Tang dynasty, poetry continued to be an important part of life at all levels of society. Scholars were required to master poetry for the civil service exams and this led to a large record of poetry and poets, a partial record of which survives today. Two of the mos

1.
History

Lyrics
–
Lyrics are words that make up a song usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist, the words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a libretto and their writer, as a librettist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit, some lyrics are abstract, almost unin

Ming dynasty
–
The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China – then known as the Empire of the Great Ming – for 276 years following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming, described by some as one of the greatest eras of orderly government, although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng, regimes loyal to th

Fu (poetry)
–
Fu, variously translated as rhapsody or poetic exposition, is a form of Chinese rhymed prose that was the dominant literary form during the Han dynasty. Fu are intermediary pieces between poetry and prose in which a place, object, feeling, or other subject is described and rhapsodized in exhaustive detail and from as many angles as possible. Classi

Book of Documents
–
The Book of Documents or Classic of History, also known as the Shangshu, is one of the Five Classics of ancient Chinese literature. It is a collection of rhetorical prose attributed to figures of ancient China, the Book of Documents was the subject of one of Chinas oldest literary controversies, between proponents of different versions of the text.

Duke of Zhou
–
He is also a Chinese culture hero credited with writing the I Ching and the Book of Poetry, establishing the Rites of Zhou, and creating the yayue of Chinese classical music. He was the son of King Wen of Zhou and Queen Tai Si. His eldest brother Bo Yikao predeceased their father, the second-eldest defeated the Shang Dynasty at the Battle of Muye a

2.
Statue of the Duke of Zhou who founded a city on the site of modern Luoyang c. 1038 BCE

Persona
–
A persona, in the words everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word phersu, with the meaning. The same individuals as actors could play different roles, each with its own attributes, sometimes even i

Ming Dynasty
–
The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China – then known as the Empire of the Great Ming – for 276 years following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming, described by some as one of the greatest eras of orderly government, although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng, regimes loyal to th

Qing Dynasty
–
It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The Qing multi-cultural empire lasted almost three centuries and formed the base for the modern Chinese state. The dynasty was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, in the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal, began organizing Banners, m

3.
An Italian map showing the "Kingdom of the Nüzhen " or the " Jin Tartars", who "have occupied and are at present ruling China", north of Liaodong and Korea, published in 1682

4.
Qing era brush container

Chinese language
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Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by nat

Book of Han
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The Book of Han or History of the Former Han is a history of China finished in 111, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. It is also called the Book of Former Han, the work was composed by Ban Gu, a court official, with the help of his sister Ban Zhao, continuing the work of

Records of the Grand Historian
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The work covers the world as it was then known to the Chinese and a 2500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the authors own time. The Records has been called a text in Chinese civilization. After Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China, no

Central Plain (China)
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It forms part of the North China Plain. In its narrowest sense, the Central Plain covers modern-day Henan, the part of Hebei, the southern part of Shanxi. A broader interpretation of the Central Plains extent would add the Guanzhong plain of Shaanxi, the part of Jiangsu. Since the beginning of recorded history, the Central Plain has been an importa

1.
Map showing the province of Henan and two definitions of the Central Plain or Zhongyuan

Shandong
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Shandong is a coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China, and is part of the East China region. Shandongs Mount Tai is the most revered mountain of Taoism and one of the sites with the longest history of continuous religious worship. The Buddhist temples in the mountains to the south of the capital of Jinan were once among the foremost Buddh

Hebei
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Hebei is a province of China in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is 冀, named after Ji Province, a Han Dynasty province that included what is now southern Hebei, the name Hebei literally means north of the river, referring to its location entirely to the north of the Huang He 黄河. Hebei was formed in 1928 after the government di

Gansu
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Gansu is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located in the northwest of the country. It lies between the Tibetan and Loess plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, the Yellow River passes through the southern part of the province. Gansu has a populati

Han River (Yangtze River tributary)
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The Han River, also known by its Chinese names as the Han Shui and Han Jiang, is a left tributary of the Yangtze in central China. It has a length of 1,532 kilometers and is the longest tributary of the Yangtze system. The river gave its name to the Han dynasty and, through it, to the Han Chinese, the dominant ethnicity in China and it is also the

Harvest
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Harvesting is the process of gathering a ripe crop from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, on smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most labor-intensive activity of the growing season. On large mechanized farms, harvesting utilizes the most expensive and sophisti

Tian
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Tiān is one of the oldest Chinese terms for heaven and a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. During the Shang Dynasty, the Chinese referred to their god as Shàngdì or Dì. During the following Zhou Dynasty, Tiān became synonymous with this figure, Heaven worship was, before the 20th century, an orthodox state religion of Chin

Analects
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It is believed to have been written during the Warring States period, and it achieved its final form during the mid-Han dynasty. During the late Song dynasty the importance of the Analects as a work was raised above that of the older Five Classics. They were very important for Confucianism and Chinas overall morals, Confucius believed that the welf

Shang dynasty
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The Shang dynasty or Yin dynasty, according to traditional historiography, ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from such as the Book of Documents, Bamboo Annals. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project dated them from c.1600 t

1.
Qianlong Emperor
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The Qianlong Emperor was the sixth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty, and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. This turned around in his years, the Qing empire began to decline with rampant corruption and wastefulness in his court. Hongli was adored both by his grandfather, the Kangxi Emperor and his father, the Yongzheng Emperor, some historians argue that the main reason why the Kangxi Emperor appointed the Yongzheng Emperor as his successor was because Hongli was his favourite grandson. He felt that Honglis mannerisms were similar to his own. As a teenager, Hongli was very capable in martial arts, after his fathers enthronement in 1722, Hongli was made a qinwang under the title Prince Bao of the First Rank. For many years, the Yongzheng Emperor did not designate any of his sons as the crown prince, Hongli went on inspection trips to the south, and was known to be an able negotiator and enforcer. He was also appointed as the regent on occasions when his father was away from the capital. Honglis accession to the throne was already foreseen before he was proclaimed emperor before the assembled imperial court upon the death of the Yongzheng Emperor. The name in the box was to be revealed to other members of the family in the presence of all senior ministers only upon the death of the emperor. When the Yongzheng Emperor died suddenly in 1735, the will was taken out and read before the entire Qing imperial court, Hongli adopted the era name Qianlong, which is composed of the characters 乾 and 隆 and which collectively mean Lasting Eminence. The Qianlong Emperor was a military leader. Immediately after ascending the throne, he sent armies to suppress the Miao rebellion and his later campaigns greatly expanded the territory controlled by the Qing Empire. This was made not only by Qing military might, but also by the disunity. Under the Qianlong Emperors reign, the Dzungar Khanate was incorporated into the Qing Empires rule and renamed Xinjiang, while to the west, the incorporation of Xinjiang into the Qing Empire resulted from the final defeat and destruction of the Dzungars, a coalition of Western Mongol tribes. The Qianlong Emperor then ordered the Dzungar genocide, historian Peter Perdue has argued that the decimation of the Dzungars was the result of an explicit policy of massacre launched by the Qianlong Emperor. Khalkha Mongol rebels under Prince Chingünjav had plotted with the Dzungar leader Amursana, the Qing army crushed the rebellion and executed Chingünjav and his entire family. Poems glorifying the Qing conquest and genocide of the Dzungar Mongols were written by Zhao, Zhao Yi wrote the Yanpu zaji in brush-notes style, where military expenditures of the Qianlong Emperors reign were recorded. The Qianlong Emperor was praised as being the source of eighteenth-century peace, the Dzungar genocide has been compared to the Qing extermination of the Jinchuan Tibetan people in 1776, which also occurred during the Qianlong Emperors reign

2.
Zhou dynasty
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The Zhou dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. This period of Chinese history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese bronze-ware making, the dynasty also spans the period in which the written script evolved into its almost-modern form with the use of an archaic clerical script that emerged during the late Warring States period. He even received sacrifice as a harvest god, the term Hòujì was probably an hereditary title attached to a lineage. Jus son Liu, however, led his people to prosperity by restoring agriculture and settling them at a place called Bin, tai later led the clan from Bin to Zhou, an area in the Wei River valley of modern-day Qishan County. Taibo and Zhongyong had supposedly fled to the Yangtze delta. Jilis son Wen bribed his way out of imprisonment and moved the Zhou capital to Feng, the Zhou enfeoffed a member of the defeated Shang royal family as the Duke of Song, which was held by descendants of the Shang royal family until its end. This practice was referred to as Two Kings, Three Reverences, according to Nicholas Bodman, the Zhou appear to have spoken a language not basically different in vocabulary and syntax from that of the Shang. A recent study by David McCraw, using lexical statistics, reached the same conclusion, the Zhou emulated extensively Shang cultural practices, perhaps to legitimize their own rule, and became the successors to Shang culture. At the same time, the Zhou may also have connected to the Xirong, a broadly defined cultural group to the west of the Shang. According to the historian Li Feng, the term Rong during the Western Zhou period was used to designate political and military adversaries rather than cultural. The proto-Zhou were first located in the Shaanxi-Shanxi highland, where they absorbed elements from the Guangshe culture, King Liu moved his people to the lower Fen Valley and to the western bank of the Yellow River, where they resumed agriculture. His son Qing Jie, led the Zhou to the valley of the Jing River. They stayed there until Dan Fu moved again to the Wei Valley in order to avoid incursion by the Rongdi nomads. During this period, the Zhou mingled with the Qiang people, in all these stages, the advanced Shang bronze culture constantly imparted its influence on the Zhou. The Qi area was the region in all these influences would come to fruition. The contact among the proto-Zhou, the native Shaanxi Longshan, the Qiang, King Wu maintained the old capital for ceremonial purposes but constructed a new one for his palace and administration nearby at Hao. Although Wus early death left a young and inexperienced heir, the Duke of Zhou assisted his nephew King Cheng in consolidating royal power. Wary of the Duke of Zhous increasing power, the Three Guards, Zhou princes stationed on the eastern plain, to maintain Zhou authority over its greatly expanded territory and prevent other revolts, he set up the fengjian system

Zhou dynasty
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History of China
Zhou dynasty
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Population concentration and boundaries of the Western Zhou dynasty (1050–771 BC) in China
Zhou dynasty
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States of the Western Zhou dynasty
Zhou dynasty
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A Western Zhou bronze gui vessel, c. 1000 BC

3.
Old Chinese
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Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including works such as the Analects, the Mencius. These works served as models for Literary Chinese, which remained the standard until the early twentieth century, thus preserving the vocabulary. Old Chinese was written with a form of Chinese characters. Although the script is not alphabetic, most characters were created by adapting a character for a similar-sounding word. Most recent reconstructions also describe Old Chinese as a language without tones, but having consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, most researchers trace the core vocabulary of Old Chinese to Sino-Tibetan, with much early borrowing from neighbouring languages. During the Zhou period, the originally monosyllabic vocabulary was augmented with polysyllabic words formed by compounding, several derivational affixes have also been identified. However the language lacked inflection, and indicated grammatical relationships using word order, the earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at the Yinxu site near modern Anyang identified as the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1250 BC. These are the bones, short inscriptions carved on tortoise plastrons and ox scapulae for divinatory purposes. The language written is undoubtedly an early form of Chinese, but is difficult to due to the limited subject matter. Only half of the 4,000 characters used have been identified with certainty, little is known about the grammar of this language, but it seems much less reliant on grammatical particles than Classical Chinese. From early in the Western Zhou period, around 1000 BC, even longer pre-Classical texts on a wide range of subjects have also been transmitted through the literary tradition. The oldest parts of the Book of Documents, the Classic of Poetry and the I Ching also date from the early Zhou period, a greater proportion of this more varied vocabulary has been identified than for the oracular period. The four centuries preceding the unification of China in 221 BC constitute the Chinese classical period in the strict sense, there are many bronze inscriptions from this period, but they are vastly outweighed by a rich literature written in ink on bamboo and wooden slips and silk. Although these are perishable materials, and many books were destroyed in the burning of books and burying of scholars in the Qin dynasty, other texts have been transmitted as copies. Such works from this period as the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, the Mencius, the Classical Chinese of such works formed the basis of Literary Chinese, which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century. Each character of the script represented a single Old Chinese word, most scholars believe that these words were monosyllabic, though some have recently suggested that a minority of them had minor presyllables

Old Chinese
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Zhou dynasty bronze inscription
Old Chinese
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Seal script on bamboo strips from the Warring States period

4.
Seal script
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Seal script is an ancient style of writing Chinese characters that was common throughout the latter half of the 1st millennium BC. It evolved organically out of the Zhou dynasty script, arising in the Warring State of Qin, there are two uses of the word seal script, the Large or Great Seal script and the lesser or Small Seal Script, the latter is also called simply seal script. The Large Seal script was originally a later, vague Han dynasty reference to writing of the Qin system similar to and it has also been used to refer to Western Zhou forms or even oracle bones as well. There were several different variants of seal script which developed in each kingdom independently during the warring state period and spring, the birds and worms script was used in the Kingdoms of Wu, Chu, and Yue. It was found on several artifacts including the Spear of Fuchai, on one side of the blade of Goujian, eight characters were written in an ancient script. The script was found to be the one called 鳥蟲文 birds and worms characters, initial analysis of the text deciphered six of the characters, 越王 and 自作用劍. As a southern state, Chu was close to the Wu-Yue influences, Chu produced broad bronze swords that were similar to Wuyue swords, but not as intricate. Chu also used the Birds and Worms style, which was borrowed by the Wu, the script of the Qin system had evolved organically from the Zhou script starting in the Spring and Autumn period. Beginning around the Warring States period, it became vertically elongated with a regular appearance and this was the period of maturation of Small Seal script, also called simply seal script. Through Chinese commentaries, it is known that Li Si compiled Cangjiepian and their form is characterized by being less rectangular and more squarish. The first known character dictionary was the 3rd century BC Erya, collated and bibliographed by Liu Xiang and his son Liu Xin, not long after, however, the Shuowen Jiezi, the lifework of Xu Shen, was written. Its 9,353 entries reproduce the standardized small-seal script variant for each entry, entries are categorized under 540 section headers. It has been anticipated that the Small Seal script will some day be encoded in Unicode, codepoints U+34000 to U+368FF have been tentatively allocated. Old Texts Phags-pa Chén Zhāoróng Research on the Qín Lineage of Writing, academia Sinica, Institute of History and Philology Monograph. Qin Yun Song, Big Seal Script Banner Script translation Richard Sears on seal script

5.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world

Traditional Chinese characters
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Chinese characters
Traditional Chinese characters
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Job announcement in a Filipino Chinese daily newspaper written in Traditional Chinese characters.
Traditional Chinese characters
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A Series of Reading workbook in Traditional Chinese used in some Elementary schools in the Philippines.

6.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time

7.
Standard Chinese
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Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times

Standard Chinese
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A poster outside of high school in Yangzhou urges people to speak Putonghua
Standard Chinese
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Zhongguo Guanhua (中国官话/中國官話), or Medii Regni Communis Loquela ("Middle Kingdom's Common Speech"), used on the frontispiece of an early Chinese grammar published by Étienne Fourmont (with Arcadio Huang) in 1742

8.
Hanyu Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks

Hanyu Pinyin
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A school slogan asking elementary students to speak Putonghua is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.
Hanyu Pinyin
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In Yiling, Yichang, Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin

9.
Wu Chinese
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Wu is a group of linguistically similar and historically related varieties of Chinese primarily spoken in the whole city of Shanghai, Zhejiang province, southern Jiangsu province and bordering areas. Major Wu varieties include those of Shanghai, Suzhou, Ningbo, Wuxi, Wenzhou/Oujiang, Hangzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua, Wu speakers, such as Chiang Kai-shek, Lu Xun and Cai Yuanpei, occupied positions of great importance in modern Chinese culture and politics. Wu can also be found being used in Shaoxing opera, which is only in national popularity to Peking opera, as well as in the performances of the popular entertainer. Wu is also spoken in a number of diaspora communities, with significant centers of immigration originating from Shanghai, Qingtian. Suzhou has traditionally been the center of Wu and was likely the first place the distinct variety of Sinitic known as Wu developed. Suzhou dialect is considered to be the most linguistically representative of the family. Due to the influence of Shanghainese, Wu as a whole is incorrectly labelled in English as simply, Shanghainese, among speakers of other Sinitic languages, Wu is often subjectively judged to be soft, light, and flowing. There is an idiom in Mandarin that specifically describes these qualities of Wu speech, Ngu nung nioe ngiu, Wu varieties have the largest vowel quality inventories in the world. The Jinhui dialect spoken in Shanghais Fengxian District has 20 vowel qualities, Wu Chinese, along with Min, is also of great significance to historical linguists due to their retention of many ancient features. These two languages have proven pivotal in determining the history of the Chinese languages. More pressing concerns of the present are those of language preservation, however, many analysts believe that a stable state of diglossia will endure for at least several generations if not indefinitely. Saying one speaks Wu is akin to saying one speaks a Romance language and it is not a particularly defined entity like Standard Mandarin or Hochdeutsch. They do this by affixing 話 Wo to their locations endonym, for example, 溫州話 Wēnzhōuhuà is used for Wenzhounese. Affixing 閒話 xiánhuà is also common and more typical of the Taihu division, Wu, the formal name and standard reference in dialectology literature. Northern Wu, Wu typically spoken in the north of Zhejiang and it by default includes the Xuanzhou division in Anhui as well, however this division is often neglected in Northern Wu discussions. Southern Wu, Wu spoken in southern Zhejiang and periphery, comprising the Oujiang, Wuzhou, Western Wu, A term gaining in usage as a synonym for the Xuanzhou division and modeled after the previous two terms since the Xuanzhou division is less representative of Northern Wu. Shanghainese, is also a common name, used because Shanghai is the most well-known city in the Wu-speaking region. The term Shanghainese is never used by linguists to refer to anything

10.
Cantonese
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Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of Chinese spoken in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. It is the prestige variety of Yue, one of the major subdivisions of Chinese. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and some neighbouring areas such as Guangxi. In Hong Kong and Macau, Cantonese serves as one of their official languages and it is also spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and throughout the Western World. When Cantonese and the closely related Yuehai dialects are classified together, Cantonese is viewed as vital part of the cultural identity for its native speakers across large swathes of southeastern China, Hong Kong and Macau. Although Cantonese shares some vocabulary with Mandarin, the two varieties are mutually unintelligible because of differences in pronunciation, grammar and lexicon, sentence structure, in particular the placement of verbs, sometimes differs between the two varieties. This results in the situation in which a Cantonese and a Mandarin text may look similar, in English, the term Cantonese is ambiguous. Cantonese proper is the variety native to the city of Canton and this narrow sense may be specified as Canton language or Guangzhou language in English. However, Cantonese may also refer to the branch of Cantonese that contains Cantonese proper as well as Taishanese and Gaoyang. In this article, Cantonese is used for Cantonese proper, historically, speakers called this variety Canton speech or Guangzhou speech, although this term is now seldom used outside mainland China. In Guangdong province, people call it provincial capital speech or plain speech. In Hong Kong and Macau, as well as among overseas Chinese communities, in mainland China, the term Guangdong speech is also increasingly being used among both native and non-native speakers. Due to its status as a prestige dialect among all the dialects of the Cantonese or Yue branch of Chinese varieties, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English, as defined in the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Chinese language has different varieties, of which Cantonese is one. Given the traditional predominance of Cantonese within Hong Kong, it is the de facto official spoken form of the Chinese language used in the Hong Kong Government and all courts and it is also used as the medium of instruction in schools, alongside English. A similar situation exists in neighboring Macau, where Chinese is an official language along with Portuguese. As in Hong Kong, Cantonese is the predominant spoken variety of Chinese used in life and is thus the official form of Chinese used in the government. The variant spoken in Hong Kong and Macau is known as Hong Kong Cantonese, Cantonese first developed around the port city of Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region of southeastern China

Cantonese
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Street in Chinatown, San Francisco. Cantonese has traditionally been the dominant Chinese variant among Chinese populations in the Western world.
Cantonese
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Gwóngdūng Wah / gwong 2 dung 1 waa 6 (Cantonese) written in traditional Chinese (left) and simplified Chinese (right) characters
Cantonese
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Chinese dictionary from Tang dynasty. Modern Cantonese pronunciation is more similar to Middle Chinese from this era than other Chinese varieties.

11.
Jyutping
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Jyutping is a romanisation system for Cantonese developed by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, an academic group, in 1993. Its formal name is The Linguistic Society of Hong Kong Cantonese Romanisation Scheme, the LSHK promotes the use of this romanisation system. The name Jyutping is a contraction consisting of the first Chinese characters of the terms Jyut6jyu5, only the finals m and ng can be used as standalone nasal syllables. ^ ^ ^ Referring to the pronunciation of these words. There are nine tones in six distinct tone contours in Cantonese, however, as three of the nine are entering tones, which only appear in syllables ending with p, t, and k, they do not have separate tone numbers in Jyutping. Jyutping and the Yale Romanisation of Cantonese represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they differ in the following, The vowels eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping, the initial j represents /j/ in Jyutping whereas y is used instead in Yale. The initial z represents /ts/ in Jyutping whereas j is used instead in Yale, the initial c represents /tsʰ/ in Jyutping whereas ch is used instead in Yale. In Jyutping, if no consonant precedes the vowel yu, then the initial j is appended before the vowel, in Yale, the corresponding initial y is never appended before yu under any circumstances. Jyutping defines three finals not in Yale, eu /ɛːu/, em /ɛːm/, and ep /ɛːp/ and these three finals are used in colloquial Cantonese words, such as deu6, lem2, and gep6. To represent tones, only tone numbers are used in Jyutping whereas Yale traditionally uses tone marks together with the letter h. Jyutping and Cantonese Pinyin represent Cantonese pronunciations with the letters in, The initials, b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, ng, h, s, gw, kw. The vowel, aa, a, e, i, o, u, the coda, i, u, m, n, ng, p, t, k. But they have differences, The vowel oe represents both /ɵ/ and /œː/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas eo and oe represent /ɵ/ and /œː/ respectively in Jyutping. The vowel y represents /y/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas both yu and i are used in Jyutping, the initial dz represents /ts/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas z is used instead in Jyutping. The initial ts represents /tsʰ/ in Cantonese Pinyin whereas c is used instead in Jyutping. To represent tones, the numbers 1 to 9 are usually used in Cantonese Pinyin, however, only the numbers 1 to 6 are used in Jyutping

Jyutping
–
Jyutping Romanization.

12.
Southern Min
–
Southern Min, or Minnan, is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in certain parts of China including southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Zhejiang, and in Taiwan. The Min Nan dialects are spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia. In common parlance, Southern Min usually refers to Hokkien, including Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien, the Southern Min dialect group also includes Teochew, though Teochew has limited mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. Hainanese is not mutually intellgible with other Southern Min and is considered a separate branch of Min. Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with Eastern Min, Pu-Xian Min, any other Min branch, Hakka, Cantonese, Shanghainese or Mandarin. Southern Min dialects are spoken in the part of Fujian. The variant spoken in Leizhou, Guangdong as well as Hainan is Hainanese and is not mutually intelligible with other Southern Min or Teochew, Hainanese is classified in some schemes as part of Southern Min and in other schemes as separate. Puxian Min was originally based on the Quanzhou dialect, but over time became heavily influenced by Eastern Min, eventually losing intellegility with Minnan. A forms of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan, collectively known as Taiwanese, Southern Min is a first language for most of the Hoklo people, the main ethnicity of Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is not absolute, as some Hoklo have very limited proficiency in Southern Min while some non-Hoklo speak Southern Min fluently, there are many Southern Min speakers also among Overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Many ethnic Chinese immigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present-day Malaysia and Singapore. In general, Southern Min from southern Fujian is known as Hokkien, Hokkienese, many Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese also originated in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong and speak Teochew language, the variant of Southern Min from that region. Southern Min-speakers form the majority of Chinese in Singapore, with the largest group being Hokkien, despite the similarities the two groups are rarely seen as part of the same Minnan Chinese subgroups. The variants of Southern Min spoken in Zhejiang province are most akin to that spoken in Quanzhou, the variants spoken in Taiwan are similar to the three Fujian variants and are collectively known as Taiwanese. Those Southern Min variants that are known as Hokkien in Southeast Asia also originate from these variants. The variants of Southern Min in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province are known as Teochew or Chaozhou. Teochew is of importance in the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora, particularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra. The Philippines variant is mostly from the Quanzhou area as most of their forefathers are from the aforementioned area, the Southern Min language variant spoken around Shanwei and Haifeng differs markedly from Teochew and may represent a later migration from Zhangzhou

13.
Hokkien
–
Hokkien /hɒˈkiɛn/ is a group of Southern Min dialects spoken throughout Southeastern China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and by other overseas Chinese. Hokkien originated in southern Fujian, the Min-speaking province and it is closely related to Teochew, though there is limited mutual intelligibility, and is somewhat more distantly related to Hainanese and Leizhou dialect. Besides Hokkien, there are also other Min and Hakka dialects in Fujian province, the term Hokkien is etymologically derived from the Southern Min pronunciation for Fujian, the province from which the language hails. The variety is known by other terms such as the more general Min Nan or Southern Min. Fujianese and Fukienese are also used, although they are somewhat imprecise, the term Hokkien is not usually used in Mainland China or Taiwan. Conversely Hokkien is the name in Southeast Asia in both English, Chinese or other languages. Speakers of Hokkien, particularly those in Southeast Asia, typically refer to Hokkien as a dialect, people in Taiwan most often refer to Hokkien as the Taiwanese language, with Minnan and Holo also being used and 福建話 is not as common. Hokkien originated in the area of Fujian province, an important center for trade and migration. The major pole of Hokkien varieties outside of Fujian is Taiwan, the Taiwanese version mostly have origins with the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou variants, but since then, the Amoy dialect is becoming the modern prestige standard for the language. There are many Hokkien speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as well as in the United States, many ethnic Han Chinese emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now Burma, Indonesia and present day Malaysia and Singapore. Many of the Hokkien dialects of this region are similar to Taiwanese and Amoynese. Hokkien is reportedly the native language of up to 80% of the Chinese people in the Philippines, Hokkien speakers form the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. Southern and part of western Fujian is home to four principal Hokkien dialects, Chinchew, Amoy, Chiangchew and Longyan, originating from the cities of Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Longyan. As Xiamen is the city of southern Fujian, Amoy is considered the most important, or even the prestige dialect. It is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, same as Amoy dialect, the varieties of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan are hybrids of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, and are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien or just Taiwanese. Used by a majority of the population, it bears much importance from a socio-political perspective, the varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects. The Singaporeans, Southern Malaysians and people in Indonesias Riau and surrounding islands variant is from the Quanzhou area and they speak a distinct form of Quanzhou Hokkien called Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. Among ethnic Chinese inhabitants of Penang, and other states in Northern Malaysia and Medan, with areas in North Sumatra, Indonesia

Hokkien
–
Distribution of Min Nan dialects. Hokkien is dark green.

14.
Middle Chinese
–
The fanqie method used to indicate pronunciation in these dictionaries, though an improvement on earlier methods, proved awkward in practice. The mid 12th-century Yunjing and other rime tables incorporate a more sophisticated, the rime tables attest to a number of sound changes that had occurred over the centuries following the publication of the Qieyun. Linguists sometimes refer to the system of the Qieyun as Early Middle Chinese, the dictionaries and tables describe pronunciations in relative terms, but do not give their actual sounds. The Swedish linguist Bernard Karlgren believed that the recorded a speech standard of the capital Changan of the Sui and Tang dynasties. This composite system contains important information for the reconstruction of the system of Old Chinese phonology. The Middle Chinese system is used as a framework for the study. Branches of the Chinese family such as Mandarin, Yue and Wu can be treated as divergent developments from the Qieyun system. The reconstruction of Middle Chinese phonology is largely dependent upon detailed descriptions in a few original sources, the most important of these is the Qieyun rime dictionary and its revisions. The Qieyun is often used together with interpretations in Song dynasty rime tables such as the Yunjing, Qiyinlue, Chinese scholars of the Northern and Southern dynasties period were concerned with the correct recitation of the classics. Various schools produced dictionaries to codify reading pronunciations and the associated rhyme conventions of regulated verse, the Qieyun was an attempt to merge the distinctions in six earlier dictionaries, which were eclipsed by its success and are no longer extant. It was accepted as the standard reading pronunciation during the Tang dynasty, the Qieyun is thus the oldest surviving rime dictionary and the main source for the pronunciation of characters in Early Middle Chinese. The rime dictionaries organize Chinese characters by their pronunciation, according to a hierarchy of tone, rhyme, the fanqie system uses multiple equivalent characters to represent each particular initial, and likewise for finals. The categories of initials and finals actually represented were first identified by the Cantonese scholar Chen Li in an analysis published in his Qièyùn kǎo. The Qieyun classified homonyms under 193 rhyme classes, each of which is placed one of the four tones. A single rhyme class may contain multiple finals, generally differing only in the medial or in so-called chongniu doublets, the Yunjing is the oldest of the so-called rime tables, which provide a more detailed phonological analysis of the system contained in the Qieyun. However, the analysis shows some influence from LMC, which needs to be taken into account when interpreting difficult aspects of the system. The Yunjing is organized into 43 tables, each covering several Qieyun rhyme classes, and classified as, One of 16 broad rhyme classes, each described as either inner or outer. The meaning of this is debated but it has suggested that it refers to the height of the main vowel, with outer finals having an open vowel

Middle Chinese
–
The start of the first rhyme class of the Guangyun (東 dōng "east")
Middle Chinese
–
The first table of the Yunjing, covering the Guangyun rhyme classes 東 dōng, 董 dǒng, 送 sòng and 屋 wū (-k in Middle Chinese)

15.
Reconstructions of Old Chinese
–
Several authors have produced reconstructions of Old Chinese phonology, beginning with the Swedish sinologist Bernard Karlgren in the 1940s and continuing to the present day. Although the various notations appear to be different, they correspond with each other on most points. By the 1970s, it was agreed that Old Chinese had fewer points of articulation than Middle Chinese, a set of voiceless sonorants. Since the 1990s, most authors have agreed on a six-vowel system, several other kinds of evidence are less comprehensive, but provide valuable clues. These include Min dialects, early Chinese transcriptions of foreign names, Middle Chinese, or more precisely Early Middle Chinese, is the phonological system of the Qieyun, a rhyme dictionary published in 601, with many revisions and expansions over the following centuries. These dictionaries indicated pronunciation by dividing a syllable into an initial consonant, according to its preface, the Qieyun did not reflect a single contemporary dialect, but incorporated distinctions made in different parts of China at the time. The fact that the Qieyun system contains more distinctions than any single form of speech means that it retains additional information about the history of the language. The large number of initials and finals are unevenly distributed, suggesting hypotheses about earlier forms of Chinese, often characters sharing a phonetic element are still pronounced alike, as in the character 中, which was adapted to write the words chōng and zhōng. In other cases the words in a series have very different sounds both in Middle Chinese and in modern varieties. Since the sounds are assumed to have been similar at the time the characters were chosen, the first systematic study of the structure of Chinese characters was Xu Shens Shuowen Jiezi. The Shuowen was mostly based on the seal script standardized in the Qin dynasty. Earlier characters from bones and Zhou bronze inscriptions often reveal relationships that were obscured in later forms. Rhyme has been a consistent feature of Chinese poetry, while much old poetry still rhymes in modern varieties of Chinese, Chinese scholars have long noted exceptions. This was attributed to lax rhyming practice of early poets until the late-Ming dynasty scholar Chen Di argued that a former consistency had been obscured by sound change and this implied that the rhyming practice of ancient poets recorded information about their pronunciation. Scholars have studied various bodies of poetry to identify classes of rhyming words at different periods, the oldest such collection is the Shijing, containing songs ranging from the 10th to 7th centuries BC. The systematic study of Old Chinese rhymes began in the 17th century, gus analysis was refined by Qing dynasty philologists, steadily increasing the number of rhyme groups. A final revision by Wang Li in the 1930s produced the set of 31 rhyme groups. The Min dialects are believed to have split off before the Middle Chinese stage, for example, the following dental initials have been identified in reconstructed proto-Min, Other points of articulation show similar distinctions within stops and nasals

Reconstructions of Old Chinese
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The start of the first rhyme class (東 dōng "east") of the Guangyun rhyme dictionary

16.
Pinyin
–
Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks

Pinyin
–
A school slogan asking elementary students to speak Putonghua is annotated with pinyin, but without tonal marks.
Pinyin
–
In Yiling, Yichang, Hubei, text on road signs appears both in Chinese characters and in Hanyu Pinyin

17.
Chinese poetry
–
Chinese poetry is poetry written, spoken, or chanted in the Chinese language. Poetry has consistently been held in high regard in China. Westerners also have found in it an interesting and pleasurable field of study, Classical Chinese poetry includes, perhaps first and foremost shi, and also other major types such as ci and qu. There is also a traditional Chinese literary form called fu, which defies categorization into English more than the other terms, during the modern period, there also has developed free verse in Western style. For example, lines from I Ching are often rhymed, but may not be considered to be poetry, a cross-cultural comparison to this might be the Pre-Socratic philosophical works in ancient Greece which were often written in verse versus free verse. The earliest extant anthologies are the Shi Jing, both of these have had a great impact on the subsequent poetic tradition. The elder of two works, the Shijing is a preserved collection of Classical Chinese poetry from over two millennia ago. The collection contains both aristocratic poems regarding life at the court and also more rustic poetry and images of natural settings. The Shijing poems are composed of four-character lines, rather than the five. The main techniques of espression are fu，bi and xing, during the Han Dynasty, the Chu Ci style of poetry contributed to the evolution of the fu style, typified by a mixture of verse and prose passages. The fu form remained popular during the subsequent Six Dynasties period, although it became shorter, the fu form of poetry remains as one of the generic pillars of Chinese poetry, although, in the Tang Dynasty, five-character and seven-character shi poetry begins to dominate. Many yuefu poems are composed of five-character or seven-character lines, in contrast to the lines of earlier times. A characteristic form of Han Dynasty literature is the fu, the poetic period of the end of the Han Dynasty and the beginning of the Six Dynasties era is known as Jianan poetry. An important collection of Han poetry is the Nineteen Old Poems, between and over-lapping the poetry of the latter days of the Han and the beginning period of the Six Dynasties was Jianan poetry. Examples of surviving poetry from this include the works of the Three Caos, Cao Cao, Cao Pi. The general and poet Lu Ji used Neo-Taoist cosmology to take literary theory in a new direction with his Wen fu, a high point of classical Chinese poetry occurred during the Tang period, not only was this period prolific in poets, but, also in poems. By this point, poetry was being composed according to regulated tone patterns, regulated and unregulated poetry were distinguished as ancient-style gushi poetry and regulated, recent-style jintishi poetry. Good examples of the gushi and jintishi forms can be found in, respectively, good examples of the jueju verse form can be found in the poems of Li Bai and Wang Wei

18.
Confucius
–
Confucius was a Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher of the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. The philosophy of Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and his followers competed successfully with many other schools during the Hundred Schools of Thought era only to be suppressed in favor of the Legalists during the Qin Dynasty. Following the victory of Han over Chu after the collapse of Qin, aphorisms concerning his teachings were compiled in the Analects, but only many years after his death. Confuciuss principles had a basis in common Chinese tradition and belief and he championed strong family loyalty, ancestor veneration, and respect of elders by their children and of husbands by their wives. He also recommended family as a basis for ideal government and he espoused the well-known principle Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself, the Golden Rule. Confucius is also a deity in Daoism. According to tradition, three generations before Confucius time, his ancestors had migrated from the Song state to the Lu state, Confucius was a descendant of the Shang dynasty Kings through the Dukes of Song. Confucius family and personal name respectively was Kong Qiu, in Chinese, he is most often known as Kongzi. He is also known by the honorific Kong Fuzi, in the Wade–Giles system of romanization, the honorific name is rendered as Kung Fu-tzu. The Latinized name Confucius is derived from Kong Fuzi, and was first coined by 16th-century Jesuit missionaries to China, within the Analects, he is often referred to simply as the Master. In 1 AD, Confucius was given his first posthumous name, in 1530, he was declared the Extremely Sage Departed Teacher. He is also known separately as the Great Sage, First Teacher and it is generally thought that Confucius was born on September 28,551 BC. His birthplace was in Zou, Lu state and his father Kong He, also known as Shuliang He, was an officer in the Lu military. Kong died when Confucius was three years old, and Confucius was raised by his mother Yan Zhengzai in poverty and his mother would later die at less than 40 years of age. At age 19 he married his wife Qiguan, and a year later the couple had their first child, Qiguan and Confucius would later have two daughters together, one of whom is thought to have died early in her life as a child. Confucius was educated at schools for commoners, where he studied and learned the Six Arts, Confucius was born into the class of shi, between the aristocracy and the common people. When his mother died, Confucius is said to have mourned for three years, as was the tradition, the Lu state was headed by a ruling ducal house. Under the duke were three families, whose heads bore the title of viscount and held hereditary positions in the Lu bureaucracy

19.
Qing dynasty
–
It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The Qing multi-cultural empire lasted almost three centuries and formed the base for the modern Chinese state. The dynasty was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, in the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal, began organizing Banners, military-social units that included Jurchen, Han Chinese, and Mongol elements. Nurhaci formed the Jurchen clans into an entity, which he renamed as the Manchus. By 1636, his son Hong Taiji began driving Ming forces out of Liaodong and declared a new dynasty, in 1644, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng conquered the Ming capital, Beijing. The Ten Great Campaigns of the Qianlong Emperor from the 1750s to the 1790s extended Qing control into Central Asia, the early rulers maintained their Manchu ways, and while their title was Emperor, they used khan to the Mongols and they were patrons of Tibetan Buddhism. They governed using Confucian styles and institutions of government and retained the imperial examinations to recruit Han Chinese to work under or in parallel with Manchus. They also adapted the ideals of the system in dealing with neighboring territories. The Qianlong reign saw the apogee and initial decline in prosperity. The population rose to some 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, corruption set in, rebels tested government legitimacy, and ruling elites did not change their mindsets in the face of changes in the world system. Following the Opium War, European powers imposed unequal treaties, free trade, the Taiping Rebellion and the Dungan Revolt in Central Asia led to the deaths of some 20 million people, most of them due to famines caused by war. In spite of disasters, in the Tongzhi Restoration of the 1860s, Han Chinese elites rallied to the defense of the Confucian order. The initial gains in the Self-Strengthening Movement were destroyed in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, in which the Qing lost its influence over Korea, New Armies were organized, but the ambitious Hundred Days Reform of 1898 was turned back by Empress Dowager Cixi, a conservative leader. Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries competed with reformist monarchists such as Kang Youwei, after the deaths of Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in 1908, the hardline Manchu court alienated reformers and local elites alike. The Wuchang Uprising on October 11,1911, led to the Xinhai Revolution, General Yuan Shikai negotiated the abdication of Puyi, the last emperor, on February 12,1912. Nurhaci declared himself the Bright Khan of the Later Jin state in both of the 12–13th century Jurchen Jin dynasty and of his Aisin Gioro clan. His son Hong Taiji renamed the dynasty Great Qing in 1636, there are competing explanations on the meaning of Qīng. The character Qīng is composed of water and azure, both associated with the water element and this association would justify the Qing conquest as defeat of fire by water

Qing dynasty
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History of China
Qing dynasty
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Flag (1889–1912)
Qing dynasty
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An Italian map showing the "Kingdom of the Nüzhen " or the " Jin Tartars", who "have occupied and are at present ruling China", north of Liaodong and Korea, published in 1682
Qing dynasty
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Qing era brush container

20.
Old Chinese phonology
–
Scholars have attempted to reconstruct the phonology of Old Chinese from documentary evidence. The oldest surviving Chinese verse, in the Classic of Poetry, although many details are disputed, most recent reconstructions agree on the basic structure. It is generally agreed that Old Chinese differed from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having consonant clusters of some sort. Most recent reconstructions also posit consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, although many details are still disputed, recent formulations are in substantial agreement on the core issues. In such systems, Old Chinese has no tones, the rising and departing tones of Middle Chinese are treated as reflexes of the Old Chinese post-codas. The primary sources of evidence for the reconstruction of the Old Chinese initials are medieval rhyme dictionaries and these dictionaries indicated pronunciation by dividing a syllable into an initial consonant and the rest, called the final. According to its preface, the Qieyun did not reflect a contemporary dialect. Rhyme tables from the Song dynasty contain a sophisticated analysis of the Qieyun initials and finals. Moreover, they were influenced by the different pronunciations of later period. The resulting inventory of 32 initials is still used by scholars within China. Although the Chinese writing system is not alphabetic, comparison of words whose characters share a phonetic element yields much information about pronunciation. Often the characters in a series are still pronounced alike, as in the character 中. In other cases the words in a series have very different sounds in any known variety of Chinese. However, there are cases where quite different Middle Chinese initials appear together in a phonetic series. Karlgren and subsequent workers have proposed either additional Old Chinese consonants or initial consonant clusters in such cases, while all such dentals were palatalized, the conditions for palatalization of velars are only partly understood. For example, the name of the city Alexandria was transcribed in the Book of Han as ⟨烏弋山離⟩, traces of the earlier liquids are also found in the divergent Waxiang dialect of western Hunan. The Song dynasty rhyme tables classified Qieyun syllables as either open or closed and this medial was unevenly distributed, being distinctive only after velar and laryngeal initials or before -ai, -an or -at. This is taken to indicate that Old Chinese had labiovelar and labiolaryngeal initials, the remaining occurrences of Middle Chinese -w- are believed to result from breaking of a back vowel before these codas

Old Chinese phonology
–
Gu Yanwu, who began the systematic study of Shijing rhymes
Old Chinese phonology
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Page from a copy of a Song dynasty edition of the Shuowen Jiezi, an early source on the structure of characters, showing characters with the 言 element

21.
Shi (poetry)
–
Shi and shih are romanizations of the character 詩 or 诗, the Chinese word for all poetry generally and across all languages. This anthology included both aristocratic poems and more rustic works believed to have derived from Huaxia folk songs and they are composed in ancient Chinese, mostly in four-character lines. In such analysis, shi poetry is contrasted with forms such as the Chu-derived ci. This use is not common within Chinese literature, however, which instead classifies these poems into other categories such as classical Chinese poetry, Field and Garden poetry, gushi, literally Ancient Poetry, may be used in either of two senses. It may also be used strictly to refer to poems in the styles of the Confucian classic, owing to the variety of pieces included in the Classic, there are few formal constraints apart from line length and rhyming every other line. Jintishi, literally Modern Poetry, was composed from the 5th century onwards and is considered to have been fully developed by the early Tang dynasty. The works were written in five- and seven-character lines and involve constrained tone patterns. The principal forms are the four-line jueju, the eight-line lüshi, gushi Classical Chinese poetry forms Classical Chinese poetry genres List of Chinese-language poets Davis, Albert The Penguin Book of Chinese Verse. Chinese Poems, a collection of Chinese poems with pinyin and parallel translation Jintishi, an introduction to regulated verse

Shi (poetry)
–
Shi

22.
Han Dynasty
–
The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. Spanning over four centuries, the Han period is considered an age in Chinese history. To this day, Chinas majority ethnic group refers to itself as the Han people and it was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han, and briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang. This interregnum separates the Han dynasty into two periods, the Western Han or Former Han and the Eastern Han or Later Han, the emperor was at the pinnacle of Han society. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and appointed ministers who came largely from the gentry class. The Han Empire was divided into areas controlled by the central government using an innovation inherited from the Qin known as commanderies. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States, from the reign of Emperor Wu onward, the Chinese court officially sponsored Confucianism in education and court politics, synthesized with the cosmology of later scholars such as Dong Zhongshu. This policy endured until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 AD, the Han dynasty was an age of economic prosperity and saw a significant growth of the money economy first established during the Zhou dynasty. The coinage issued by the government mint in 119 BC remained the standard coinage of China until the Tang dynasty. The period saw a number of limited institutional innovations, the Xiongnu, a nomadic steppe confederation, defeated the Han in 200 BC and forced the Han to submit as a de facto inferior partner, but continued their raids on the Han borders. Emperor Wu of Han launched several campaigns against them. The ultimate Han victory in these wars eventually forced the Xiongnu to accept vassal status as Han tributaries, the territories north of Hans borders were quickly overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation. Imperial authority was seriously challenged by large Daoist religious societies which instigated the Yellow Turban Rebellion. When Cao Pi, King of Wei, usurped the throne from Emperor Xian, following Liu Bangs victory in the Chu–Han Contention, the resulting Han dynasty was named after the Hanzhong fief. Chinas first imperial dynasty was the Qin dynasty, the Qin unified the Chinese Warring States by conquest, but their empire became unstable after the death of the first emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. Within four years, the authority had collapsed in the face of rebellion. Although Xiang Yu proved to be a commander, Liu Bang defeated him at Battle of Gaixia. Liu Bang assumed the title emperor at the urging of his followers and is known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu, Changan was chosen as the new capital of the reunified empire under Han

Han Dynasty
–
History of China
Han Dynasty
–
Han dynasty in 1 AD.
Han Dynasty
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A silk banner from Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan province. It was draped over the coffin of Lady Dai (d. 168 BC), wife of the Marquess Li Cang (利蒼) (d. 186 BC), chancellor for the Kingdom of Changsha.
Han Dynasty
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A gilded bronze oil lamp in the shape of a kneeling female servant, dated 2nd century BC, found in the tomb of Dou Wan, wife of the Han prince Liu Sheng; its sliding shutter allows for adjustments in the direction and brightness in light while it also traps smoke within the body.

23.
Confucianism
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Confucianism, also known as Ruism, is described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or simply a way of life. In the Han dynasty, Confucian approaches edged out the proto-Taoist Huang-Lao, the disintegration of the Han political order in the second century CE opened the way for the doctrines of Buddhism and Neo-Taoism, which offered spiritual explanations lacking in Confucianism. A Confucian revival began during the Tang dynasty of 618-907, in the late Tang, Confucianism developed in response to Buddhism and Taoism and was reformulated as Neo-Confucianism. This reinvigorated form was adopted as the basis of the imperial exams, the abolition of the examination system in 1905 marked the end of official Confucianism. The New Culture intellectuals of the twentieth century blamed Confucianism for Chinas weaknesses. In the late twentieth century Confucian work ethic has been credited with the rise of the East Asian economy, with particular emphasis on the importance of the family and social harmony, rather than on an otherworldly source of spiritual values, the core of Confucianism is humanistic. While Tiān has some characteristics that overlap the category of deity, it is primarily an impersonal absolute principle, Confucianism focuses on the practical order that is given by a this-worldly awareness of the Tiān. Confucian thought focuses on the cultivation of virtue and maintenance of ethics, Some of the basic Confucian ethical concepts and practices include rén, yì, and lǐ, and zhì. Rén is the essence of the human being which manifests as compassion and it is the virtue-form of Heaven. Yì is the upholding of righteousness and the disposition to do good. Lǐ is a system of norms and propriety that determines how a person should properly act in everyday life according to the law of Heaven. Zhì is the ability to see what is right and fair, or the converse, Confucianism holds one in contempt, either passively or actively, for failure to uphold the cardinal moral values of rén and yì. In the 20th century Confucianisms influence diminished greatly, in the last decades there have been talks of a Confucian Revival in the academic and the scholarly community and there has been a grassroots proliferation of various types of Confucian churches. In late 2015 many Confucian personalities formally established a national Holy Confucian Church in China to unify the many Confucian congregations, strictly speaking, there is no term in Chinese which directly corresponds to Confucianism. In the Chinese language, the character rú 儒 meaning scholar or learned man is used both in the past and the present to refer to things related to Confucianism. The character rú in ancient China has diverse meanings, Some examples include, weak, soft, to tame, to comfort and to educate or to refine. Rújiā contains the character jiā, which means family. Rújiào and Kǒngjiào contain the Chinese character jiào, the teaching or transmission, used in such terms as education

24.
Zhou Dynasty
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The Zhou dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. This period of Chinese history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese bronze-ware making, the dynasty also spans the period in which the written script evolved into its almost-modern form with the use of an archaic clerical script that emerged during the late Warring States period. He even received sacrifice as a harvest god, the term Hòujì was probably an hereditary title attached to a lineage. Jus son Liu, however, led his people to prosperity by restoring agriculture and settling them at a place called Bin, tai later led the clan from Bin to Zhou, an area in the Wei River valley of modern-day Qishan County. Taibo and Zhongyong had supposedly fled to the Yangtze delta. Jilis son Wen bribed his way out of imprisonment and moved the Zhou capital to Feng, the Zhou enfeoffed a member of the defeated Shang royal family as the Duke of Song, which was held by descendants of the Shang royal family until its end. This practice was referred to as Two Kings, Three Reverences, according to Nicholas Bodman, the Zhou appear to have spoken a language not basically different in vocabulary and syntax from that of the Shang. A recent study by David McCraw, using lexical statistics, reached the same conclusion, the Zhou emulated extensively Shang cultural practices, perhaps to legitimize their own rule, and became the successors to Shang culture. At the same time, the Zhou may also have connected to the Xirong, a broadly defined cultural group to the west of the Shang. According to the historian Li Feng, the term Rong during the Western Zhou period was used to designate political and military adversaries rather than cultural. The proto-Zhou were first located in the Shaanxi-Shanxi highland, where they absorbed elements from the Guangshe culture, King Liu moved his people to the lower Fen Valley and to the western bank of the Yellow River, where they resumed agriculture. His son Qing Jie, led the Zhou to the valley of the Jing River. They stayed there until Dan Fu moved again to the Wei Valley in order to avoid incursion by the Rongdi nomads. During this period, the Zhou mingled with the Qiang people, in all these stages, the advanced Shang bronze culture constantly imparted its influence on the Zhou. The Qi area was the region in all these influences would come to fruition. The contact among the proto-Zhou, the native Shaanxi Longshan, the Qiang, King Wu maintained the old capital for ceremonial purposes but constructed a new one for his palace and administration nearby at Hao. Although Wus early death left a young and inexperienced heir, the Duke of Zhou assisted his nephew King Cheng in consolidating royal power. Wary of the Duke of Zhous increasing power, the Three Guards, Zhou princes stationed on the eastern plain, to maintain Zhou authority over its greatly expanded territory and prevent other revolts, he set up the fengjian system

Zhou Dynasty
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History of China
Zhou Dynasty
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Population concentration and boundaries of the Western Zhou dynasty (1050–771 BC) in China
Zhou Dynasty
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States of the Western Zhou dynasty
Zhou Dynasty
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A Western Zhou bronze gui vessel, c. 1000 BC

25.
Shang Dynasty
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The Shang dynasty or Yin dynasty, according to traditional historiography, ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from such as the Book of Documents, Bamboo Annals. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project dated them from c.1600 to 1046 BC, the Shang dynasty is the earliest dynasty of traditional Chinese history supported by archaeological evidence. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, stone, bone, the Anyang site has yielded the earliest known body of Chinese writing, mostly divinations inscribed on oracle bones – turtle shells, ox scapulae, or other bones. More than 20,000 were discovered in the scientific excavations during the 1920s and 1930s. The inscriptions provide critical insight into many topics from the politics, economy, many events concerning the Shang dynasty are mentioned in various Chinese classics, including the Book of Documents, the Mencius and the Zuo Zhuan. Working from all the documents, the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian assembled a sequential account of the Shang dynasty as part of his Records of the Grand Historian. His history describes some events in detail, while in other cases only the name of a king is given, a closely related, but slightly different, account is given by the Bamboo Annals. The Annals were interred in 296 BC, but the text has a complex history, the name Yīn is used by Sima Qian for the dynasty, and in the current text version of the Bamboo Annals for both the dynasty and its final capital. It has been a name for the Shang throughout history. Since the Records of Emperors and Kings by Huangfu Mi, it has often used specifically to describe the later half of the Shang dynasty. In Japan and Korea, the Shang are still referred to almost exclusively as the Yin dynasty, however it seems to have been a Zhou name for the earlier dynasty. The word does not appear in the bones, which refer to the state as Shāng. It also does not appear in securely-dated Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, xie is said to have helped Yu the Great to control the Great Flood and for his service to have been granted a place called Shang as a fief. Sima Qian relates that the dynasty itself was founded 13 generations later, when Xies descendant Tang overthrew the impious and cruel final Xia ruler in the Battle of Mingtiao. The Records recount events from the reigns of Tang, Tai Jia, Tai Wu, Pan Geng, Wu Ding, Wu Yi and the final king Di Xin. According to the Records, the Shang moved their capital five times, Di Xin, the last Shang king, is said to have committed suicide after his army was defeated by Wu of Zhou. Legends say that his army and his equipped slaves betrayed him by joining the Zhou rebels in the decisive Battle of Muye, according to the Yi Zhou Shu and Mencius the battle was very bloody

Shang Dynasty
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History of China
Shang Dynasty
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Remnants of advanced, stratified societies dating back to the Shang period have been found in the Yellow River Valley.
Shang Dynasty
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The site of Yin, the capital (1350–1046 BC) of the Shang dynasty, also called Yin dynasty
Shang Dynasty
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Oracle bones pit at Yin

26.
State of Song
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Sòng was a state during the Zhou dynasty of ancient China, with its capital at Shangqiu. The state was founded soon after King Wu of Zhou conquered the Shang dynasty to establish the Zhou dynasty in 1046/46 BC and it was conquered by the State of Qi in 286 BC, during the Warring States period. Confucius was a descendant of a Song nobleman who moved to the State of Lu, as a result, for a time Shang became a vassal state of Zhou, with the Shang heir Wu Geng allowed to continue ancestor worship at Yin. This practice was referred to as Èr wáng Sān kè, however, after King Wu’s death, Wu Geng fomented a rebellion and was killed by the Duke of Zhou. Another Shang royal family descendant, Weizi, was granted land at Shangqiu, a sign of its descent from the Shang is that the Song in its early period followed the succession principle of agnatic seniority, rather than agnatic primogeniture like the Zhou. In 701 BC, a marriage between Lady Yong of Song and Duke Zhuang of Zheng empowered Song to manipulate the administration of Zheng. In 651 BC, Duke Huan of Song died, leaving the district to be ruled by Duke Xiang and he was considered a Hegemon by some, but was unable to maintain that role. He eventually fell to the troops of Chu, in 355 BC, Dai Ticheng, a distant relative of the ruling royal line and once a minister of Duke Huan II, managed to usurp the throne. In 328 BC, Dai Yan, a brother of Ticheng, took the throne and declared himself to be King Kang of Song. The king was ambitious and had succeeded in beating troops from Chu, Wei and Qi, however, the kingdom was finally annexed by Qi in 286 BC, with troops from Chu and Wei serving on behalf of Qi. Qin, which had been an ally of Song, refused to intervene for strategic and diplomatic reasons after being convinced by Su Dai from Wei, sus predictions were proven correct and Qin benefited from the downfall of its former ally. The philosopher Mozi references this state in the chapter Obvious Existence of Ghosts, in which he mentions a number of Spring and Autumn Annals, including those of the Zhou, Yan, the Spring and Autumn Annals of Song has not survived. Unless otherwise indicated, the ruler is the son of his predecessor, the title of Duke of Song and Duke Who Continues and Honours the Yin were bestowed upon Kong An (孔安 by the Eastern Han dynasty because he was part of the Shang dynastys legacy. This branch of the Confucius family is a branch from the line that held the title of Marquis of Fengsheng village. Song is represented by the star Eta Ophiuchi in the asterism Left Wall, Heavenly Market enclosure

State of Song
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Chinese states in the 5th century BC

27.
Spring and Autumn period
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The Spring and Autumn period was a period in Chinese history from approximately 771 to 476 BC which corresponds roughly to the first half of the Eastern Zhou dynasty. The periods name derives from the Spring and Autumn Annals, a chronicle of the state of Lu between 722 and 479 BC, which associates with Confucius. The gradual Partition of Jin, one of the most powerful states, marked the end of the Spring and Autumn period, in 771 BC, the Quanrong invasion destroyed the Western Zhou and its capital Haojing, forcing the Zhou king to flee to the eastern capital Luoyi. The event ushered in the Eastern Zhou dynasty, which is divided into the Spring and Autumn, during the Spring and Autumn period, Chinas feudal system of fengjian became largely irrelevant. The Zhou court, having lost its homeland in the Guanzhong region, held nominal power, during the early part of the Zhou dynasty period, royal relatives and generals had been given control over fiefdoms in an effort to maintain Zhou authority over vast territory. As the power of the Zhou kings waned, these became increasingly independent states. The most important states came together in regular conferences where they decided important matters, during these conferences one vassal ruler was sometimes declared hegemon. As the era continued, larger and more powerful states annexed or claimed suzerainty over smaller ones, by the 6th century BC most small states had disappeared and just a few large and powerful principalities dominated China. Some southern states, such as Chu and Wu, claimed independence from the Zhou, in Chengzhou, Prince Yijiu was crowned by his supporters as King Ping. The Zhou court would never regain its authority, instead. Though the king de jure retained the Mandate of Heaven, the title held little actual power, a total of 148 states are mentioned in the chronicles for this period,128 of which were absorbed by the four largest states by the end of the period. The kings prestige legitimized the military leaders of the states, over the next two centuries, the four most powerful states—Qin, Jin, Qi and Chu—struggled for power. These multi-city states often used the pretext of aid and protection to intervene, during this rapid expansion, interstate relations alternated between low-level warfare and complex diplomacy. Duke Yin of Lu ascended the throne in 722 BC, from this year on the state of Lu kept an official chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals, which along with its commentaries is the standard source for the Spring and Autumn period. Corresponding chronicles are known to have existed in states as well. In 717 BC, Duke Zhuang of Zheng went to the capital for an audience with King Huan, during the encounter the duke felt he was not treated with the respect and etiquette which would have been appropriate, given that Zheng was now the chief protector of the capital. In 715 BC Zheng also became involved in a dispute with Lu regarding the Fields of Xu. The fields had been put in the care of Lu by the king for the purpose of producing royal sacrifices for the sacred Mount Tai

Spring and Autumn period
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History of China
Spring and Autumn period
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Urbanization during the Spring and Autumn period.
Spring and Autumn period
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Chinese pu vessel with interlaced dragon design, Spring and Autumn period.
Spring and Autumn period
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A large bronze tripod vessel from the Spring and Autumn period, now located at the Henan Museum

28.
King Wen of Zhou
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King Wen of Zhou was king of Zhou during the late Shang dynasty in ancient China. Although it was his son Wu who conquered the Shang following the Battle of Muye, a large number of the hymns of the Classic of Poetry are praises to the legacy of King Wen. Some consider him the first epic hero of Chinese history, born Ji Chang, Wen was the son of Tai Ren and Ji Jili, the king of a small state along the Wei River in present-day Shaanxi. His father was betrayed and executed by the Shang king Wen Ding in the late 12th century BC and he married Tai Si and had at least ten sons. At one point, King Zhou of Shang, fearing Wens growing power and his second son, King Wu, followed his fathers wishes and crushed the Shang at Muye, creating the imperial Zhou dynasty. A burial mound in Zhouling town, Xianyang, Shaanxi was once thought to be the resting place of King Wen. In the Qing dynasty the tomb was fitted with a headstone bearing Wens name and incorporated into a complex in his honor. Nearby tombs were thought to be those of Wens successors King Wu, modern archeology has since concluded that the five tombs are not old enough to be from the Zhou dynasty, and are more likely to be those of Han dynasty royals. The true location of King Wens tomb is unknown, although it is likely to be in the Xianyang-Xian area. Many of the older odes from the Classic of Poetry are hymns in praise of King Wen, King Wen is also credited with having stacked the eight trigrams in their various permutations to create the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching. He is also said to have written the judgments which are appended to each hexagram, the most commonly used sequence of the 64 hexagrams is attributed to him and is usually referred to as the King Wen sequence. In 196 BC, Han Gaozu gave King Wen the title Greatest of All Kings, Ci Hai Bian Ji Wei Yuan Hui. Shanghai Ci Shu Chu Ban She,1979 Wu, K. C

King Wen of Zhou
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Ji Chang

29.
Caesura
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A caesura, also written cæsura and cesura, is a break in a verse where one phrase ends and the following phrase begins. In time value this break may vary between the slightest perception of all the way up to a full pause. A caesura in music represents a break or pause. The length of a caesura where notated is at the discretion of the conductor, in choral works a brief caesura may be notated where singers are to catch their breath. In classical Greek and Latin poetry a caesura is the juncture where one word ends, in contrast, a word juncture at the end of a foot is called a diaeresis. Some caesurae are expected and represent a point of articulation between two phrases or clauses, all other caesurae are only potentially places of articulation. The opposite of a caesura is a bridge where word juncture is not permitted. In modern European poetry, a caesura is defined as a natural phrase end, a masculine caesura follows a stressed syllable while a feminine caesura follows an unstressed syllable. Initial and terminal caesurae are rare in formal, Romance, and Neoclassical verse, in music, a caesura denotes a brief, silent pause, during which metrical time is not counted. Similar to a silent fermata, caesurae are located between notes or measures, rather than on notes or rests, a fermata may be placed over a caesura to indicate a longer pause. In verse scansion, the modern caesura mark is a vertical bar ⟨||⟩ or ⟨‖⟩. The same mark separately developed as the virgule, the single used to mark line breaks in poetry. In musical notation, a caesura is marked by a double oblique lines, the symbol is popularly called tram-lines in the UK and railroad tracks in the US. It can also be marked by a quarter rest with a fermata over it, in choral works, a smaller apostrophe-like mark is used to denote caesurae. Unlike later writers, Homeric lines more commonly employ feminine caesurae, caesurae were widely used in Latin poetry, for example, in the opening line of Virgils Aeneid, Arma virumque cano || Troiae qui primus ab oris This line uses caesura in the medial position. The ancient elegiac couplet form of the Greeks and Romans contained a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of pentameter, the pentameter often displayed a clearer caesura, as in this example from Propertius, Cynthia prima fuit, || Cynthia finis erit. The caesura was even more important to Old English verse than it was to Latin or Greek poetry, in Latin or Greek poetry, the caesura could be suppressed for effect in any line. In the alliterative verse that is shared by most of the oldest Germanic languages, the opening line of Beowulf reads, Hwæt

Caesura
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An example of a caesura in modern western music notation.

30.
Syntax
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In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, specifically word order. The term syntax is used to refer to the study of such principles and processes. The goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages, in mathematics, syntax refers to the rules governing the behavior of mathematical systems, such as formal languages used in logic. The word syntax comes from Ancient Greek, σύνταξις coordination, which consists of σύν syn, together, and τάξις táxis, a basic feature of a languages syntax is the sequence in which the subject, verb, and object usually appear in sentences. Over 85% of languages usually place the subject first, either in the sequence SVO or the sequence SOV, the other possible sequences are VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV, the last three of which are rare. In the West, the school of thought came to be known as traditional grammar began with the work of Dionysius Thrax. For centuries, work in syntax was dominated by a known as grammaire générale. This system took as its premise the assumption that language is a direct reflection of thought processes and therefore there is a single. It became apparent that there was no such thing as the most natural way to express a thought, the Port-Royal grammar modeled the study of syntax upon that of logic. Syntactic categories were identified with logical ones, and all sentences were analyzed in terms of Subject – Copula – Predicate, initially, this view was adopted even by the early comparative linguists such as Franz Bopp. The central role of syntax within theoretical linguistics became clear only in the 20th century, there are a number of theoretical approaches to the discipline of syntax. One school of thought, founded in the works of Derek Bickerton, sees syntax as a branch of biology, other linguists take a more Platonistic view, since they regard syntax to be the study of an abstract formal system. Yet others consider syntax a taxonomical device to reach broad generalizations across languages, the hypothesis of generative grammar is that language is a structure of the human mind. The goal of grammar is to make a complete model of this inner language. This model could be used to all human language and to predict the grammaticality of any given utterance. This approach to language was pioneered by Noam Chomsky, most generative theories assume that syntax is based upon the constituent structure of sentences. Generative grammars are among the theories that focus primarily on the form of a sentence and this complex category is notated as instead of V. NP\S is read as a category that searches to the left for an NP and outputs a sentence. The category of verb is defined as an element that requires two NPs to form a sentence

Syntax
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A syntactic parse of "Alfred spoke" under the dependency formalism

31.
Tang poetry
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The Quantangshi includes over 48,900 poems written by over 2,200 authors. During the Tang dynasty, poetry continued to be an important part of life at all levels of society. Scholars were required to master poetry for the civil service exams and this led to a large record of poetry and poets, a partial record of which survives today. Two of the most famous poets of the period were Li Bai, Tang poetry has had an ongoing influence on world literature and modern and quasi-modern poetry. The representative form of poetry composed during the Tang dynasty is the shi and this contrasts to poetry composed in the earlier Han dynasty and later Song and Yuan dynasties, which are characterized by fu, ci and qu forms, respectively. However, the fu continued to be composed during the Tang dynasty, the poems generally consisted of multiple rhyming couplets, with no definite limit on the number of lines but a definite preference for multiples of four lines. The Quantangshi anthology compiled in the eighteenth century includes over 48,900 poems written by over 2,200 authors. The Quantangwen, despite its name, contains more than 1,500 fu and is widely consulted source for Tang poetry. There are also collections of individual work, which generally can be dated earlier than the Qing anthologies. Only about a hundred Tang poets have such collected editions extant, another important source is anthologies of poetry compiled during the Tang dynasty, although only thirteen such anthologies survive in full or in part. The poetic tradition inherited by the Tang poets was immense and diverse, by the time of the Tang dynasty, there was already a continuous Chinese body of poetry dating back for over a thousand years. Such works as the Chu Ci and Shijing were major influences on Tang poetry, as were the developments of Han poetry, all of these influenced the Six Dynasties poetry, which in turn helped to inspire the Tang poets. In terms of influences upon the poetry of the early Tang, Burton Watson characterizes the poetry of the Sui, the Tang dynasty was a time of major social and probably linguistic upheavals. Thus, the genre may be divided into several major more-or-less chronological divisions, the chronology of Tang poetry may be divided into four parts, Early Tang, High Tang, Middle Tang, and Late Tang. In Early Tang, poets began to develop the foundation what is now considered to be the Tang style of poetry inherited a rich and deep literary and poetic tradition, Early Tang poetry is subdivided into early, middle and late phases. Indeed, there were others, as this was a culture that placed a great emphasis on literature and poetry, at least for persons in official capacity. Representative of the phase of early Tang were the so-called Four Literary Friends, poets Li Jiao, Su Weidao, Cui Rong. In the late phase the poetic style becomes more typical of what is considered as Tang poetry, a major influence was Wang Ji upon the Four Paragons of the Early Tang, Wang Bo, Yang Jiong, Lu Zhaolin, and Luo Binwang

Tang poetry
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History

32.
Lyrics
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Lyrics are words that make up a song usually consisting of verses and choruses. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist, the words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a libretto and their writer, as a librettist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit, some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of expression. Rappers can also create lyrics with a variation of rhyming words or words that create, Lyric derives via Latin lyricus from the Greek λυρικός, the adjectival form of lyre. It first appeared in English in the century in reference, to the Earl of Surreys translations of Petrarch. Stainer and Barrett used the word as a substantive, Lyric, poetry or blank verse intended to be set to music. By the 1930s, the present use of the plurale tantum lyrics had begun, the singular form lyric still appears, its present use, however, is to refer to a specific phrase within a songs lyrics. The differences between poem and song may become less meaningful where verse is set to music, to the point that any distinction becomes untenable and this is perhaps recognised in the way popular songs have lyrics. However, the verse may pre-date its tune, or the tune may be lost over time but the words survive, nursery rhymes may be songs, or doggerel, the term doesnt imply a distinction. The ghazal is a form that is considered primarily poetic. See also rapping, roots of hip hop music, analogously, verse drama might normally be judged as poetry, but not consisting of poems. In Baroque music, melodies and their lyrics where prose, rather than paired lines they consist of rhetorical sentences or paragraphs consisting of an opening gesture, an amplification, and a close, in German Vordersatz-Fortspinnung-Epilog. For example, When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, But when I became a man, I put away childish things. -1 Corinthians 13,11 In the lyrics of music a shifter is a word, often a pronoun, where reference varies according to who is speaking, when. For example, who is the my of My Generation, see Royalties Currently, there are many websites featuring song lyrics. This offering, however, is controversial, since some sites include copyrighted lyrics offered without the holders permission, music Publishers Association, which represents sheet music companies, launched a legal campaign against such websites in December 2005. The MPAs president, Lauren Keiser, said the free lyrics web sites are completely illegal, Lyrics licenses could be obtained worldwide through one of the two aggregators, LyricFind and Musixmatch. The first company to provide licensed lyrics was Yahoo, quickly followed by MetroLyrics and Lyrics. com

33.
Ming dynasty
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The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China – then known as the Empire of the Great Ming – for 276 years following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming, described by some as one of the greatest eras of orderly government, although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng, regimes loyal to the Ming throne – collectively called the Southern Ming – survived until 1683. He rewarded his supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia, the rise of new emperors and new factions diminished such extravagances, the capture of the Zhengtong Emperor during the 1449 Tumu Crisis ended them completely. The imperial navy was allowed to fall into disrepair while forced labor constructed the Liaodong palisade, haijin laws intended to protect the coasts from Japanese pirates instead turned many into smugglers and pirates themselves. The growth of Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced an influx of Japanese. This abundance of specie remonetized the Ming economy, whose money had suffered repeated hyperinflation and was no longer trusted. While traditional Confucians opposed such a prominent role for commerce and the newly rich it created, combined with crop failure, floods, and epidemic, the dynasty collapsed before the rebel leader Li Zicheng, who was defeated by the Manchu-led Eight Banner armies who founded the Qing dynasty. The Mongol-led Yuan dynasty ruled before the establishment of the Ming dynasty, consequently, agriculture and the economy were in shambles, and rebellion broke out among the hundreds of thousands of peasants called upon to work on repairing the dykes of the Yellow River. A number of Han Chinese groups revolted, including the Red Turbans in 1351, the Red Turbans were affiliated with the White Lotus, a Buddhist secret society. Zhu Yuanzhang was a peasant and Buddhist monk who joined the Red Turbans in 1352. In 1356, Zhus rebel force captured the city of Nanjing, with the Yuan dynasty crumbling, competing rebel groups began fighting for control of the country and thus the right to establish a new dynasty. In 1363, Zhu Yuanzhang eliminated his archrival and leader of the rebel Han faction, Chen Youliang, in the Battle of Lake Poyang, arguably the largest naval battle in history. Known for its ambitious use of ships, Zhus force of 200,000 Ming sailors were able to defeat a Han rebel force over triple their size, claimed to be 650. The victory destroyed the last opposing rebel faction, leaving Zhu Yuanzhang in uncontested control of the bountiful Yangtze River Valley, Zhu Yuanzhang took Hongwu, or Vastly Martial, as his era name. Hongwu made an effort to rebuild state infrastructure. He built a 48 km long wall around Nanjing, as well as new palaces, Hongwu organized a military system known as the weisuo, which was similar to the fubing system of the Tang dynasty. With a growing suspicion of his ministers and subjects, Hongwu established the Jinyiwei, some 100,000 people were executed in a series of purges during his rule

34.
Fu (poetry)
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Fu, variously translated as rhapsody or poetic exposition, is a form of Chinese rhymed prose that was the dominant literary form during the Han dynasty. Fu are intermediary pieces between poetry and prose in which a place, object, feeling, or other subject is described and rhapsodized in exhaustive detail and from as many angles as possible. Classical fu composers attempted to use as wide a vocabulary as they could, Fu poems employ alternating rhyme and prose, varying line length, close alliteration, onomatopoeia, loose parallelism, and extensive cataloging of their topics. Unlike the songs of the Classic of Poetry or the Verses of Chu, fu were meant to be recited aloud or chanted, the fu genre came into being around the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC and continued to be regularly used into the Song dynasty. Fu were used as grand praises for the courts, palaces, and cities. The largest collections of historical fu are the Selections of Refined Literature, the Book of Han, the New Songs from the Jade Terrace, there is no counterpart or similar form to the fu genre in Western literature. During a large part of the century, fu poetry was harshly criticized by Chinese scholars as excessively ornate, lacking in real emotion. Because of these associations, scholarship on fu poetry in China almost ceased entirely between 1949 and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Since then, study of fu has gradually returned to its previous level, the term fu, when applied to Chinese literature, first appears in the Zhou dynasty, where it meant to present, as in poetic recitations. It was also one of the three literary devices traditionally assigned to the songs of the Classic of Poetry. Over the course of the late 1st millennium BC, fu became the name of poetic expositions in which an author or composer created a comprehensive exposition, Han dynasty historian Ban Gu in the Monograph on Arts and Letters defined fu as to recite without singing. Fu poetry is often viewed as a descendant of the Verses of Chu songs combined with the expositions of the Intrigues of the Warring States. During the golden age of fu in the 2nd century BC, a chapter of Xunzi containing a series of riddles has been theorized to be the earliest known fu. The earliest preserved and definitely datable fu is Jia Yis Fu on the Owl, jias surviving writings mention an earlier fu he wrote upon his exile to Changsha which he modeled upon Qu Yuans Encountering Sorrow, but it has not survived to the present. Much of the surviving Han fu and other poetry survives through Six Dynasty anthologies and other sources, Fu achieved its greatest prominence during the early Han dynasty. Jia Yis Fu on the Owl, written around 170 BC, was composed following on the year of his exile to Changsha. Fu on the Owl, besides being the earliest known fu, is unusual in the extended use of philosophical reflection upon his own situation in life. Emperor Wu of Han ascended the throne in 141 BC, Emperor Wu summoned famous fu writers to the imperial court in Changan, where many of them composed and presented fu to the entire court

35.
Book of Documents
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The Book of Documents or Classic of History, also known as the Shangshu, is one of the Five Classics of ancient Chinese literature. It is a collection of rhetorical prose attributed to figures of ancient China, the Book of Documents was the subject of one of Chinas oldest literary controversies, between proponents of different versions of the text. The New Text version was preserved from Qin Shi Huangs burning of books, over time, the Old Text version of the Documents became more widely accepted, until it was established as the imperially sanctioned edition during the early Tang dynasty. The chapters are grouped into four sections representing different eras, the reign of Yu the Great. The Zhou section accounts for half the text. Some of its New Text chapters are among the earliest examples of Chinese prose, the history of the various versions of the Documents is particularly complex, and has been the subject of a long-running literary and philosophical controversy. According to a tradition, the Book of Documents was compiled by Confucius as a selection from a much larger group of documents. However, the history of both texts is obscure. Beginning with Confucius, writers increasingly drew on the Documents to illustrate general principles, six citations of unnamed Shū appear in the Analects. Although Confucius invoked the pre-dynastic emperors Yao and Shun, and figures from the Xia and Shang dynasties, increasing numbers of citations, some with titles, appear in 4th century BC works such as the Mencius, Mozi and Commentary of Zuo. These authors favoured documents relating to Yao, Shun and the Xia dynasty, the chapters currently believed to be the oldest were little used by Warring States authors, perhaps due to the difficulty of the archaic language or a less familiar world-view. Fewer than half the passages quoted by authors are present in the received text. Authors such as Mencius and Xunzi, while quoting the Documents and their attitude contrasts with the reverence that would be shown to the text in the Han dynasty, when its compilation was attributed to Confucius. Many copies of the work were destroyed in the Burning of Books during the Qin dynasty, Fu Sheng reconstructed part of the work from hidden copies in the late 3rd to early 2nd century BC, at the start of the succeeding Han dynasty. His version was known as the New Text because it was written in the clerical script and it originally consisted of 29 chapters, but the Great Speech chapter was lost shortly afterwards and replaced by a new version. The remaining 28 chapters were later expanded to 33 when Du Lin divided some chapters during the 1st century, another version was said to have been recovered from a wall of the home of Confucius in 186 BC by his descendent Kong Anguo. This version was known as the Old Text, because it was written in the pre-Qin seal script. Han dynasty sources give contradictory accounts of the nature of this find, according to the commonly repeated account of the Book of Han, the Old Text included the chapters preserved by Fu Sheng, another version of the Great Speech chapter and some 16 additional chapters

Book of Documents
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Fu Sheng expounding on the Classic, attributed to Wang Wei (8th century)
Book of Documents
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Title page of annotated Shujing edition printed in 1279, held by Taiwan's National Central Library

36.
Duke of Zhou
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He is also a Chinese culture hero credited with writing the I Ching and the Book of Poetry, establishing the Rites of Zhou, and creating the yayue of Chinese classical music. He was the son of King Wen of Zhou and Queen Tai Si. His eldest brother Bo Yikao predeceased their father, the second-eldest defeated the Shang Dynasty at the Battle of Muye around 1046 BC, King Wu distributed many fiefs to his relatives and followers and Dan received the ancestral territory of Zhou near present-day Luoyang. Only two years after assuming power, King Wu died and left the kingdom to his young son King Cheng, within five years, the Duke of Zhou had managed to defeat the Three Guards and other rebellions and his armies pushed east, bringing more land under Zhou control. The Duke of Zhou was credited with elaborating the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven, once Cheng came of age, the Duke of Zhou dutifully gave up the throne without trouble. The dukes eight sons all received land from the king, the eldest son received Lu, the second succeeded to his fathers fief. In later centuries, subsequent emperors considered the Duke of Zhou a paragon of virtue, the empress Wu Zetian named her short-lived 8th-century Second Zhou Dynasty after him and called him the Honorable and Virtuous King. In 1008, the Zhenzong Emperor gave the Duke the posthumous title King of Exemplary Culture and he was also known as the First Sage. In 2004, Chinese archaeologists reported that they may have found his tomb complex in Qishan County, Duke of Zhou is also known as the God of Dreams. The Analects record Confucius saying, How I have gone downhill and it has been such a long time since I dreamt of the Duke of Zhou. This was meant as a lamentation of how the ideals of the Duke of Zhou had faded. In Chinese legends, if an important thing is going to happen to someone, the Duke of Zhous offspring held the title of Wujing Boshi. One of the Duke of Zhous 72 generation descendants family tree was examined and commented on by Song Lian, Duke Huan of Lus son through Qingfu was the ancestor of Mencius. He was descended from Duke Yang of the State of Lu 魯煬公 Duke Yang was the son of Bo Qin, the genealogy is found in the Mencius family tree

Duke of Zhou
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Portrait of the Duke of Zhou in Sancai Tuhui
Duke of Zhou
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Statue of the Duke of Zhou who founded a city on the site of modern Luoyang c. 1038 BCE

37.
Persona
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A persona, in the words everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word phersu, with the meaning. The same individuals as actors could play different roles, each with its own attributes, sometimes even in the same court appearance. In the context of the web, users create virtual persona which are also termed internet or online identities. In literature the term refers to a character established by an author. Poets such as Robert Browning, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot are strongly associated with such narrative voices and these writers understood the term slightly differently and derived its use and meaning from different traditions. Examples of Eliots personae were Prufrock and Sweeney, Pound developed such characters as Cino, Bertran de Born, Propertius, and Mauberley in response to figures in Browning’s dramatic monologues. Whereas Eliot used masks to distance himself from aspects of life which he found degrading and repulsive, Pounds personae were often poets. For Pound, the personae were a way of working through a specific poetic problem, in this sense, the persona is a transparent mask, wearing the traits of two poets and responding to two situations, old and new, which are similar and overlapping. In literary analysis, any narrative voice that speaks in the first person and it is contrasted with a third-person narrative voice, generally taken to be more objective and impersonal. Usually the performers assume a role that matches the music they sing on stage, many performers make use of a persona. Some artists create various characters, especially if their career is long, for example, David Bowie initially adopted a role as an alien Ziggy Stardust, and later as The Thin White Duke. More than just artistic pseudonyms, the personae are independent characters used in the artists shows, however, in music, a persona does not always mean a change. Some authors have noted that Bob Dylans charisma is due largely to his almost stereotyped image, always with a harmonica, guitar, and with his hair, nasal voice. The persona also serves to claim a right or to draw attention to a certain subject and that is the case of Marilyn Manson and his interest in death and morbidity, and Madonna and her interest in sexuality. The concept of persona in music was introduced by Edward T, cone in his The Composers Voice, that dealt with the relation between the lyrical self of a songs lyrics and its composer. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles, presents a group persona, artists such as Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, and Beyoncé popularized the use of personae in the performance of pop music

38.
Ming Dynasty
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The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China – then known as the Empire of the Great Ming – for 276 years following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming, described by some as one of the greatest eras of orderly government, although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng, regimes loyal to the Ming throne – collectively called the Southern Ming – survived until 1683. He rewarded his supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia, the rise of new emperors and new factions diminished such extravagances, the capture of the Zhengtong Emperor during the 1449 Tumu Crisis ended them completely. The imperial navy was allowed to fall into disrepair while forced labor constructed the Liaodong palisade, haijin laws intended to protect the coasts from Japanese pirates instead turned many into smugglers and pirates themselves. The growth of Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced an influx of Japanese. This abundance of specie remonetized the Ming economy, whose money had suffered repeated hyperinflation and was no longer trusted. While traditional Confucians opposed such a prominent role for commerce and the newly rich it created, combined with crop failure, floods, and epidemic, the dynasty collapsed before the rebel leader Li Zicheng, who was defeated by the Manchu-led Eight Banner armies who founded the Qing dynasty. The Mongol-led Yuan dynasty ruled before the establishment of the Ming dynasty, consequently, agriculture and the economy were in shambles, and rebellion broke out among the hundreds of thousands of peasants called upon to work on repairing the dykes of the Yellow River. A number of Han Chinese groups revolted, including the Red Turbans in 1351, the Red Turbans were affiliated with the White Lotus, a Buddhist secret society. Zhu Yuanzhang was a peasant and Buddhist monk who joined the Red Turbans in 1352. In 1356, Zhus rebel force captured the city of Nanjing, with the Yuan dynasty crumbling, competing rebel groups began fighting for control of the country and thus the right to establish a new dynasty. In 1363, Zhu Yuanzhang eliminated his archrival and leader of the rebel Han faction, Chen Youliang, in the Battle of Lake Poyang, arguably the largest naval battle in history. Known for its ambitious use of ships, Zhus force of 200,000 Ming sailors were able to defeat a Han rebel force over triple their size, claimed to be 650. The victory destroyed the last opposing rebel faction, leaving Zhu Yuanzhang in uncontested control of the bountiful Yangtze River Valley, Zhu Yuanzhang took Hongwu, or Vastly Martial, as his era name. Hongwu made an effort to rebuild state infrastructure. He built a 48 km long wall around Nanjing, as well as new palaces, Hongwu organized a military system known as the weisuo, which was similar to the fubing system of the Tang dynasty. With a growing suspicion of his ministers and subjects, Hongwu established the Jinyiwei, some 100,000 people were executed in a series of purges during his rule

39.
Qing Dynasty
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It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The Qing multi-cultural empire lasted almost three centuries and formed the base for the modern Chinese state. The dynasty was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, in the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal, began organizing Banners, military-social units that included Jurchen, Han Chinese, and Mongol elements. Nurhaci formed the Jurchen clans into an entity, which he renamed as the Manchus. By 1636, his son Hong Taiji began driving Ming forces out of Liaodong and declared a new dynasty, in 1644, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng conquered the Ming capital, Beijing. The Ten Great Campaigns of the Qianlong Emperor from the 1750s to the 1790s extended Qing control into Central Asia, the early rulers maintained their Manchu ways, and while their title was Emperor, they used khan to the Mongols and they were patrons of Tibetan Buddhism. They governed using Confucian styles and institutions of government and retained the imperial examinations to recruit Han Chinese to work under or in parallel with Manchus. They also adapted the ideals of the system in dealing with neighboring territories. The Qianlong reign saw the apogee and initial decline in prosperity. The population rose to some 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, corruption set in, rebels tested government legitimacy, and ruling elites did not change their mindsets in the face of changes in the world system. Following the Opium War, European powers imposed unequal treaties, free trade, the Taiping Rebellion and the Dungan Revolt in Central Asia led to the deaths of some 20 million people, most of them due to famines caused by war. In spite of disasters, in the Tongzhi Restoration of the 1860s, Han Chinese elites rallied to the defense of the Confucian order. The initial gains in the Self-Strengthening Movement were destroyed in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, in which the Qing lost its influence over Korea, New Armies were organized, but the ambitious Hundred Days Reform of 1898 was turned back by Empress Dowager Cixi, a conservative leader. Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries competed with reformist monarchists such as Kang Youwei, after the deaths of Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in 1908, the hardline Manchu court alienated reformers and local elites alike. The Wuchang Uprising on October 11,1911, led to the Xinhai Revolution, General Yuan Shikai negotiated the abdication of Puyi, the last emperor, on February 12,1912. Nurhaci declared himself the Bright Khan of the Later Jin state in both of the 12–13th century Jurchen Jin dynasty and of his Aisin Gioro clan. His son Hong Taiji renamed the dynasty Great Qing in 1636, there are competing explanations on the meaning of Qīng. The character Qīng is composed of water and azure, both associated with the water element and this association would justify the Qing conquest as defeat of fire by water

Qing Dynasty
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History of China
Qing Dynasty
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Flag (1889–1912)
Qing Dynasty
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An Italian map showing the "Kingdom of the Nüzhen " or the " Jin Tartars", who "have occupied and are at present ruling China", north of Liaodong and Korea, published in 1682
Qing Dynasty
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Qing era brush container

40.
Chinese language
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Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty

41.
Book of Han
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The Book of Han or History of the Former Han is a history of China finished in 111, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. It is also called the Book of Former Han, the work was composed by Ban Gu, a court official, with the help of his sister Ban Zhao, continuing the work of their father, Ban Biao. They modeled their work on the Records of the Grand Historian, a universal history and it is the best source, sometimes the only one, for many topics in this period. A second work, the Book of the Later Han covers the Eastern Han period from 25 to 220, and was composed in the fifth century by Fan Ye. This history developed from a continuation of Sima Qians Records of the Grand Historian, initiated by Ban Gus father, Ban Biao and this work is usually referred to as Later Traditions, which clearly indicates that the elder Bans work was meant to be a continuation. After Ban Biaos death, his eldest son Ban Gu was dissatisfied with what his father had completed and this distinguished it from Sima Qians history, which had begun with Chinas earliest legendary rulers. In this way, Ban Gu initiated the Jizhuanti format for dynastic histories that was to remain the model for the official histories until modern times. For the periods where they overlapped, Ban Gu adopted nearly verbatim much of Sima Qians material and he also incorporated at least some of what his father had written, though it is difficult to know how much. The completed work ran to a total of 100 fascicles 卷, and included essays on law, science, geography, Ban Gus younger sister Ban Zhao finished writing the book in 111,19 years after Ban Gu had died in prison. An outstanding scholar in her own right, she is thought to have written volumes 13–20 and 26, the Annals section and the three chapters covering the reign of Wang Mang were translated into English by Homer H. Dubs. Other chapters have been rendered into English by A. F. P, sargent, Nancy Lee Swann, and Burton Watson. Ban Gus history set the standard for the writings of later Chinese dynasties and it is regarded as one of the Four Histories 四史 of the Twenty-Four Histories canon, together with the Records of the Grand Historian, Records of the Three Kingdoms and History of the Later Han. Emperors biographies in strict annal form, which offer an overview of the most important occurrences. Each treatise describes an area of effort of the state, the biographies confine themselves to the description of events that clearly show the exemplary character of the person. Two or more people are treated in one article, as they belong to the same class of people. The last articles describe the relations between China and the various peoples beyond the frontiers and it is later recorded that in 57, the southern Wa kingdom of Na sent an emissary named Taifu to pay tribute to Emperor Guangwu and received a golden seal. The seal itself was discovered in northern Kyūshū in the 18th century, according to the Book of Wei, the most powerful kingdom on the archipelago in the third century was called Yamatai and was ruled by the legendary Queen Himiko. Dorneich, Chris M. Chinese sources on the History of the Niusi-Wusi-Asi-Rishi-Arsi-Arshi-Ruzhi, shiji 110/Hanshu 94A, The Xiongnu, Synopsis of Chinese original Text and several Western Translations with Extant Annotations

42.
Records of the Grand Historian
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The work covers the world as it was then known to the Chinese and a 2500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the authors own time. The Records has been called a text in Chinese civilization. After Confucius and the First Emperor of Qin, Sima Qian was one of the creators of Imperial China, not least because by providing definitive biographies, the Records set the model for the 24 subsequent dynastic histories of China. The work that became Records of the Grand Historian was begun by Sima Tan, after his death in 110 BC, it was continued and completed by his son and successor Sima Qian, who is generally credited as the works author. Sima Qian is known to have completed the Records before his death in c.86 BC, with one copy residing in the capital of Changan. Details regarding the Records early reception and circulation are not well known, beginning in the Northern and Southern dynasties and the Tang dynasty, a number of scholars wrote and edited commentaries to the Records. Most 1st millennium editions of the Records include the commentaries of Pei Yin, Sima Zhen, the primary modern edition of the Records is the Zhonghua Book Company edition of 1959, and is based on an edition prepared by the Chinese historian Gu Jiegang in the early 1930s. There are two known surviving fragments of Records manuscripts from before the Tang dynasty, both of which are preserved in the Ishiyama-dera temple in Ōtsu, Japan, a number of woodblock printed editions of the Records survive, the earliest of which date to the Song dynasty. In all, the Records is about 526,000 Chinese characters long, making it four times longer than Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War, Sima Qian conceived and composed his work in self-contained units, with a good deal of repetition between them. His manuscript was written on bamboo slips with about 24 to 36 characters each, even after the manuscript was allowed to circulate or be copied, the work would have circulated as bundles of bamboo slips or small groups. Endymion Wilkinson calculates that there were probably between 466 and 700 bundles, whose total weight would have been 88–132 pounds, which would have been difficult to access, later copies on silk would have been much lighter, but also expensive and rare. Until the work was transferred to many centuries later, circulation would have been difficult and piecemeal. Sima Qian organized the chapters of Records of the Grand Historian into five categories, the first five cover either periods, such as the Five Emperors, or individual dynasties, such as the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. The last seven cover individual rulers, starting with the First Emperor of Qin, Tables Chapters 13 to 22 are the Tables, which are one genealogical table and nine other chronological tables. Each table except the last one begins with an introduction to the period it covers, Hereditary Houses The Hereditary Houses is the second largest of the five Records sections, and comprises chapters 31 to 60. Within this section, the chapters are very different in nature than the later chapters. Many of the chapters are chronicle-like accounts of the leading states of the Zhou dynasty, such as the states of Qin and Lu. The later chapters, which cover the Han dynasty, contain biographies, Ranked Biographies The Ranked Biographies is the largest of the five Records sections, covering chapters 61 to 130, and accounts for 42% of the entire work

43.
Central Plain (China)
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It forms part of the North China Plain. In its narrowest sense, the Central Plain covers modern-day Henan, the part of Hebei, the southern part of Shanxi. A broader interpretation of the Central Plains extent would add the Guanzhong plain of Shaanxi, the part of Jiangsu. Since the beginning of recorded history, the Central Plain has been an important site for Chinese civilization, inscriptions on some bronze objects from this era contain references to the Central States, Eastern States, or Southern States. This indicates that the Central Plain, which was referred to as the Central States in these inscriptions, was considered to occupy the center of the world. In a broader context, the term Zhongyuan refers to Chinese civilization and China proper, regions directly governed by centralized Chinese governments, however, when used to describe the Chinese civilization, Zhongyuan often connotes Huaxia and Han Chinese cultural dominance. The Dungans, a Chinese-affiliated ethnic group, are referred to using terms linked to Zhongyuan, North China Plain Yellow River Delta and Bohai Sea Yangtze River Delta Pearl River Delta Chungyuan Standard Time

Central Plain (China)
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Map showing the province of Henan and two definitions of the Central Plain or Zhongyuan

44.
Shandong
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Shandong is a coastal province of the Peoples Republic of China, and is part of the East China region. Shandongs Mount Tai is the most revered mountain of Taoism and one of the sites with the longest history of continuous religious worship. The Buddhist temples in the mountains to the south of the capital of Jinan were once among the foremost Buddhist sites in China. The city of Qufu is the birthplace of Confucius, and was established as the center of Confucianism. Individually, the two Chinese characters in the name Shandong mean mountain and east, Shandong could hence be translated literally as east of the mountains and refers to the provinces location to the east of the Taihang Mountains. A common nickname for Shandong is Qílǔ, after the States of Qi and Lu that existed in the area during the Spring and Autumn period. Whereas the State of Qi was a power of its era. Lu, however, became renowned for being the home of Confucius, the cultural dominance of the State of Lu heritage is reflected in the official abbreviation for Shandong which is 鲁. English speakers in the 19th century called the province Shan-tung, the province is on the eastern edge of the North China Plain and in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, and extends out to sea as the Shandong Peninsula. The earliest dynasties exerted varying degrees of control over western Shandong, over subsequent centuries, the Dongyi were eventually sinicized. During the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, at this time, Shandong was home to two major states, the state of Qi at Linzi and the state of Lu at Qufu. Lu is noted for being the home of Confucius, the state was, however, comparatively small, and eventually succumbed to the larger state of Chu from the south. The state of Qi was, on the hand, was a major power throughout the period. Cities it ruled included Linzi, Jimo and Ju, the Qin dynasty conquered Qi and founded the first centralized Chinese state in 221 BCE. The Han dynasty that followed created a number of commanderies supervised by two regions in what is now modern Shandong, Qingzhou in the north and Yanzhou in the south, during the division of the Three Kingdoms, Shandong belonged to the Cao Wei, which ruled over northern China. After the Three Kingdoms period, a period of unity under the Western Jin dynasty gave way to invasions by nomadic peoples from the north. Northern China, including Shandong, was overrun, Shandong stayed with the Northern Dynasties for the rest of this period. The Sui dynasty reestablished unity in 589, and the Tang dynasty presided over the golden age of China

45.
Hebei
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Hebei is a province of China in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is 冀, named after Ji Province, a Han Dynasty province that included what is now southern Hebei, the name Hebei literally means north of the river, referring to its location entirely to the north of the Huang He 黄河. Hebei was formed in 1928 after the government dissolved the province of Chihli. Beijing and Tianjin Municipalities, which each other, were carved out of Hebei. The province borders Liaoning to the northeast, Inner Mongolia to the north, Shanxi to the west, Henan to the south, Bohai Bay of the Yellow Sea is to the east. A common alternate name for Hebei is Yānzhào, after the state of Yan, plains in Hebei were the home of Peking man, a group of Homo erectus that lived in the area around 200,000 to 700,000 years ago. Neolithic findings at the prehistoric Beifudi site date back to 7000 and 8000 BC, during the Spring and Autumn period, Hebei was under the rule of the states of Yan in the north and Jin in the south. Also during this period, a people known as Dí invaded the plains of northern China. During the Warring States period, Jin was partitioned, and much of its territory within Hebei went to Zhao, the Qin Dynasty unified China in 221 BC. The Han Dynasty ruled the area under two provinces, Youzhou Province in the north and Jizhou Province in the south, Hebei then came under the rule of the Kingdom of Wei, established by the descendants of Cao Cao. After the invasions of nomadic peoples at the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, the chaos of the Sixteen Kingdoms. Hebei, firmly in North China and right at the frontier, changed hands many times, being controlled at various points in history by the Later Zhao, Former Yan, Former Qin. The Northern Wei reunified northern China in 440, but split in half in 534, with Hebei coming under the eastern half, the Sui Dynasty again unified China in 589. During the Tang Dynasty, the area was formally designated Hebei for the first time, during the earlier part of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Hebei was fragmented among several regimes, though it was eventually unified by Li Cunxu, who established the Later Tang. During the Northern Song Dynasty, the sixteen ceded prefectures continued to be an area of hot contention between Song China and the Liao Dynasty. The Southern Song Dynasty that came after abandoned all of North China, including Hebei, the Mongol Yuan Dynasty divided China into provinces but did not establish Hebei as a province. Rather, the area was administrated by the Secretariat at capital Dadu. When the Manchu Qing Dynasty came to power in 1644, they abolished the southern counterpart, during the Qing Dynasty, the northern borders of Zhili extended deep into what is now Inner Mongolia, and overlapped in jurisdiction with the leagues of Inner Mongolia

46.
Gansu
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Gansu is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located in the northwest of the country. It lies between the Tibetan and Loess plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, the Yellow River passes through the southern part of the province. Gansu has a population of 26 million and covers an area of 425,800 square kilometres, the capital is Lanzhou, located in the southeast part of the province. Gansu is a compound of the names of Ganzhou and Suzhou, Gansu is abbreviated as 甘 or 陇, and is also known as Longxi or Longyou, in reference to the Long Mountain east of Gansu. Gansu is a name first used during the Song dynasty of two Sui and Tang dynasty prefectures, Gan and Su. In prehistoric times, Gansu was host to Neolithic cultures, the Dadiwan culture, from where archaeologically significant artifacts have been excavated, flourished in the eastern end of Gansu from about 6000 BC to about 3000 BC. The Majiayao culture and part of the Qijia culture took root in Gansu from 3100 BC to 2700 BC and 2400 BC to 1900 BC respectively, the Yuezhi originally lived in the very western part of Gansu until they were forced to emigrate by the Xiongnu around 177 BCE. The State of Qin, later to become the state of the Chinese empire, grew out from the southeastern part of Gansu. The Qin name is believed to have originated, in part, Qin tombs and artifacts have been excavated from Fangmatan near Tianshui, including one 2200-year-old map of Guixian County. In imperial times, Gansu was an important strategic outpost and communications link for the Chinese empire, the Han dynasty extended the Great Wall across this corridor, building the strategic Yumenguan and Yangguan fort towns along it. Remains of the wall and the towns can be found there, the Ming dynasty built the Jiayuguan outpost in Gansu. By the Qingshui treaty, concluded in 823 between the Tibetan Empire and the Tang dynasty, China lost a part of Gansu province for a significant period. After the fall of the Uyghur Empire, an Uyghur state was established in parts of Gansu that lasted from 848 to 1036 AD, during that time, many of Gansus residents were converted to Islam. Along the Silk Road, Gansu was an important province. Temples and Buddhist grottoes such as those at Mogao Caves and Maijishan Caves contain artistically and historically revealing murals. An early form of paper inscribed with Chinese characters and dating to about 8 BC was discovered at the site of a Western Han garrison near the Yumen pass in August 2006, the province was also the origin of the Dungan Revolt of 1862-77. Among the Qing forces were Muslim generals like Ma Zhanao and Ma Anliang who helped Qing crush the rebel Muslims, the revolt spread into Gansu from neighbouring Qinghai. Frequent earthquakes, droughts and famines have tended to slow progress of the province until recently

47.
Han River (Yangtze River tributary)
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The Han River, also known by its Chinese names as the Han Shui and Han Jiang, is a left tributary of the Yangtze in central China. It has a length of 1,532 kilometers and is the longest tributary of the Yangtze system. The river gave its name to the Han dynasty and, through it, to the Han Chinese, the dominant ethnicity in China and it is also the namesake of the city of Hanzhong on its upper course. The headwaters of the Han flow from Mount Bozhong in southwestern Shaanxi, the stream then travels east across the southern part of that province. Its highland valley—known as the Qinba Laolin—divides and is protected by the Qinling or Qin Mountains to its north, the main cities are Hanzhong in the west and Ankang in the east. It crosses most of Hubei from the northwest to the southeast, falling into the Yangtze at the provincial capital Wuhan, a city of several million inhabitants. The merging rivers divide the city of Wuhan into three sections, Wuchang in the south, Hankou to the northeast of the confluence, the area surrounding the confluence is known as the Jianghan Plain. Apart from a few major basins, such as the area around Hanzhong, the Nanshan Forest covered the northern slopes, the Bashan Forest, the southern. Danjiangkou Dam was constructed on the Han River in northern Hubei in 1958, the Danjiangkou Reservoir created thereby is now used as part of the South–North Water Transfer Project. The river was considered holy by the inhabitants on its banks. It is also considered part of the line between northern and southern China. Other Han Rivers Xihan River, the Western Han

Han River (Yangtze River tributary)
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The Hankou side of the Han River in Wuhan

48.
Harvest
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Harvesting is the process of gathering a ripe crop from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, on smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most labor-intensive activity of the growing season. On large mechanized farms, harvesting utilizes the most expensive and sophisticated farm machinery, the term harvesting in general usage may include immediate postharvest handling, including cleaning, sorting, packing, and cooling. Harvest, a noun, came from the Old English word hærfest, meaning autumn, harvest-time, the harvest came to also mean the activity of reaping, gathering, and storing grain and other grown products during the autumn, and also the grain and other grown products themselves. Harvest was also verbified, To harvest means to reap, gather, people who harvest and equipment that harvests are harvesters, while they do it, they are harvesting. In history, crop failures and subsequent famines have triggered human migration, rural exodus, over years, unsustainable farming of land degrades soil fertility and diminishes crop yield. With a steadily growing population and local overpopulation, even slightly diminishing yields are already the equivalent to a partial harvest failure. Fortunately, fertilizers obviate the need for regeneration in the first place. Harvesting commonly refers to grain and produce, but also has other uses, the term harvest is also used in reference to harvesting grapes for wine. Within the context of irrigation, water harvesting refers to the collection, instead of harvest, the term exploit is also used, as in exploiting fisheries or water resources. Energy harvesting is the process of capturing and storing energy that would otherwise go unexploited, body harvesting, or cadaver harvesting, is the process of collecting and preparing cadavers for anatomical study. In a similar sense, organ harvesting is the removal of tissues or organs from a donor for purposes of transplanting. Harvesting or Domestic Harvesting in Canada refers to hunting, fishing, and plant gathering by First Nations, Métis, for example, in the Gwichin Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement, Harvesting means gathering, hunting, trapping or fishing. Similarly, in the Tlicho Land Claim and Self Government Agreement, Harvesting means, in relation to wildlife, hunting, trapping or fishing and, in relation to plants or trees, combine Harvester Harvest Harvest festival Overharvesting Threshing Winnowing

49.
Tian
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Tiān is one of the oldest Chinese terms for heaven and a key concept in Chinese mythology, philosophy, and religion. During the Shang Dynasty, the Chinese referred to their god as Shàngdì or Dì. During the following Zhou Dynasty, Tiān became synonymous with this figure, Heaven worship was, before the 20th century, an orthodox state religion of China. In Taoism and Confucianism, Tiān is often translated as Heaven and is mentioned in relationship to its aspect of Dì. These two aspects of Daoist cosmology are representative of the nature of Taoism. They are thought to maintain the two poles of the Three Realms of reality, with the middle realm occupied by Humanity, the ancient oracle and bronze ideograms for dà 大 depict a stick figure person with arms stretched out denoting great, large. The oracle and bronze characters for tiān 天 emphasize the cranium of this great, either with a square or round head, two variant Chinese characters for tiān 天 heaven are 兲 and the Daoist coinage 靝. The sinologist Herrlee Creel, who wrote a study on The Origin of the Deity Tien. For three thousand years it has believed that from time immemorial all Chinese revered Tien 天, Heaven, as the highest deity. But the new materials that have available in the present century. It appears rather that Tien is not named at all in the Shang inscriptions, Tien appears only with the Chou, and was apparently a Chou deity. After the conquest the Chou considered Tien to be identical with the Shang deity Ti, first, Creel analyzes all the tian and di occurrences meaning god, gods in Western Zhou era Chinese classic texts and bronze inscriptions. His corpus of authenticated Western Zhou bronzes mention tian 91 times, second, Creel contrasts the disparity between 175 occurrences of di or shangdi on Shang era oracle inscriptions with at least 26 occurrences of tian. Upon examining these 26 oracle scripts that scholars have identified as tian 天 heaven, god, according to tradition, Tang of Shang assembled his subjects to overthrow King Jie of Xia, the infamous last ruler of the Xia Dynasty, but they were reluctant to attack. The king said, Come, ye multitudes of the people, listen all to my words. It is not I, the child, who dare to undertake what may seem to be a rebellious enterprise. Now, ye multitudes, you are saying, Our prince does not compassionate us, I have indeed heard these words of you all, but the sovereign of Hsiâ is an offender, and, as I fear God, I dare not but punish him. Now you are saying, What are the crimes of Hsiâ to us, the king of Hsiâ does nothing but exhaust the strength of his people, and exercise oppression in the cities of Hsiâ

50.
Analects
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It is believed to have been written during the Warring States period, and it achieved its final form during the mid-Han dynasty. During the late Song dynasty the importance of the Analects as a work was raised above that of the older Five Classics. They were very important for Confucianism and Chinas overall morals, Confucius believed that the welfare of a country depended on the moral cultivation of its people, beginning from the nations leadership. He believed that individuals could begin to cultivate a sense of virtue through ren. He taught that a sense of virtue was his primary prerequisite for leadership. His primary goal in educating his students was to produce ethically well-cultivated men who would carry themselves with gravity, speak correctly, the work is therefore titled Lunyu meaning edited conversations or selected speeches. The view however was challenged by Qing dynasty philologist Cui Shu who argued on linguistic ground that the last five books are later than the rest of the work. Many modern scholars now believe that the work was compiled over a period of two hundred years, with some questioning the authenticity of some of the sayings. A Han dynasty writer Wang Chong however claimed that the Analects that existed during the Han dynasty was incomplete, at least three times the amount of those do not exist in the Analects at all. According to the Han dynasty scholar Liu Xiang, there were two versions of the Analects that existed at the beginning of the Han dynasty, the Lu version and the Qi version. The Lu version contained twenty chapters, and the Qi version contained twenty-two chapters, of the twenty chapters that both versions had in common, the Lu version had more passages. Each version had its own masters, schools, and transmitters, the old text version got its name because it was written in characters not used since the earlier Warring States period, when it was assumed to have been hidden. According to the Han dynasty scholar Huan Tan, the old version had four hundred characters different from the Lu version. Of these twenty-seven differences, the text only agrees with the old text version in two places. This text was recognized by Zhang Yus contemporaries and by subsequent Han scholars as superior to either individual version, the Qi version was lost for about 1800 years but re-found during the excavation of the tomb of Marquis of Haihun that was found 2011. No complete copies of either the Lu version or the old version of the Analects exist today. Archaeologists have since discovered two handwritten copies of the Analects that were written around 50 BC, during the Western Han dynasty and they are known as the Dingzhou Analects, and the Pyongyang Analects, after the location of the tombs in which they were found. The Dingzhou Analects was discovered in 1973, but no transcription of its contents was published until 1997, the Pyongyang Analects was discovered in 1992

Analects
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A page from the Analects
Analects
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The Analects of Confucius, from Östasiatiska Museet, Stockholm
Analects
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A copy of Zhu Xi's commentary on the Analects, printed during the Ming dynasty

51.
Shang dynasty
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The Shang dynasty or Yin dynasty, according to traditional historiography, ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from such as the Book of Documents, Bamboo Annals. The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project dated them from c.1600 to 1046 BC, the Shang dynasty is the earliest dynasty of traditional Chinese history supported by archaeological evidence. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade, stone, bone, the Anyang site has yielded the earliest known body of Chinese writing, mostly divinations inscribed on oracle bones – turtle shells, ox scapulae, or other bones. More than 20,000 were discovered in the scientific excavations during the 1920s and 1930s. The inscriptions provide critical insight into many topics from the politics, economy, many events concerning the Shang dynasty are mentioned in various Chinese classics, including the Book of Documents, the Mencius and the Zuo Zhuan. Working from all the documents, the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian assembled a sequential account of the Shang dynasty as part of his Records of the Grand Historian. His history describes some events in detail, while in other cases only the name of a king is given, a closely related, but slightly different, account is given by the Bamboo Annals. The Annals were interred in 296 BC, but the text has a complex history, the name Yīn is used by Sima Qian for the dynasty, and in the current text version of the Bamboo Annals for both the dynasty and its final capital. It has been a name for the Shang throughout history. Since the Records of Emperors and Kings by Huangfu Mi, it has often used specifically to describe the later half of the Shang dynasty. In Japan and Korea, the Shang are still referred to almost exclusively as the Yin dynasty, however it seems to have been a Zhou name for the earlier dynasty. The word does not appear in the bones, which refer to the state as Shāng. It also does not appear in securely-dated Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, xie is said to have helped Yu the Great to control the Great Flood and for his service to have been granted a place called Shang as a fief. Sima Qian relates that the dynasty itself was founded 13 generations later, when Xies descendant Tang overthrew the impious and cruel final Xia ruler in the Battle of Mingtiao. The Records recount events from the reigns of Tang, Tai Jia, Tai Wu, Pan Geng, Wu Ding, Wu Yi and the final king Di Xin. According to the Records, the Shang moved their capital five times, Di Xin, the last Shang king, is said to have committed suicide after his army was defeated by Wu of Zhou. Legends say that his army and his equipped slaves betrayed him by joining the Zhou rebels in the decisive Battle of Muye, according to the Yi Zhou Shu and Mencius the battle was very bloody

Shang dynasty
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History of China
Shang dynasty
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Remnants of advanced, stratified societies dating back to the Shang period have been found in the Yellow River Valley.
Shang dynasty
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The site of Yin, the capital (1350–1046 BC) of the Shang dynasty, also called Yin dynasty
Shang dynasty
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Oracle bones pit at Yin